History, that is to say, the unconscious, universal life of humanity, in the aggregate, every moment profits by the life of kings… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“what time can be more beautiful than the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, that's like supposing the same candle could last you all your life — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“I led the life of so many other so-called respectable people,—that is, in debauchery. And like the majority, while leading the life… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
You've said nothing, of course, and I ask nothing," he was saying; "but you know that friendship's not what I want: that… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“Like the majority of irreproachably virtuous women, wearying often of the monotony of a virtuous life, Dolly from a distance excused illicit… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there in life any purpose which the inevitable death that awaits me… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“But does it make any difference now?" he thought. "And what will be there, and what has been done here? Why was… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
The chief cause of unhappiness in married life is that people think that marriage is sex attraction, which takes the form of… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
It is horrible! It is not the suffering and the death of the animals that is horrible, but the fact that the… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“Never to the end of his life could he understand goodness, beauty, or truth, or the significance of his actions which were… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair, and that… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“Now he experienced a feeling akin to that of a man whom while calmly crossing a bridge over a precipice, should suddenly… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
I asked: 'What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause, and space?' And I replied to quite another question: 'What… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
In order to correctly define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“I recalled the hundreds of occasions when life had died within me only to be reborn. I remembered that I only lived… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“Let me speak at last,” she said. “For myself personally, I can’t conceive of love without family life. I am lonely, lonely… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“You do not admit the conceivability at all?' he queried. 'But why not? We admit the existence of electricity, of which we… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“The main reason for the terrible cruelty between men today, apart from the absence religion, is still the refined complexity of life… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life, which is the more free the more abstract its… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“no disease suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his own peculiarities and always has his… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“The younger sister was piqued, and in turn disparaged the life of a tradesman, and stood up for that of a peasant.… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“At the point where he, today's Ivan Ilyich, began to emerge, all the pleasures that had seemed so real melted away now… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“Love hinders death. Love is life. Anything at all that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is - everything… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“You have a wholesome character, and you want all of life to made up of wholesome phenomena, but that doesn't happen... All… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“The worker picked up Pakhom’s spade, dug a grave, and buried him - six feet from head to heel, exactly the amount… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
Our whole life is taken up with anxiety for personal security, with preparations for living, so that we really never live at… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life's impossible; and that I can't know, and so I can't live,"… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“The goal of the artist is not to solve a question irrefutably, but to force people to love life in all its… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
He had the unlucky capacity many men have of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“The only real science is the knowledge of how a person should live his life. And this knowledge is open to everyone.” — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“But, as always happens after death, his face had grown handsomer, more dignified—more distinguished, in short, than it had ever been in… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
There lay between them, separating them, that same terrible line of the unknown and of fear, like the line separating the living… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it. — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“Each believed that the life he himself led was the only real life and the life led by his friend was nothing… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“Your treasure is where your heart is. If a person believes that his or her treasure is in the body only —… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
But that had been grief--this was joy. Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the ordinary conditions of life;… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
These joys were so trifling as to be as imperceptible as grains of gold among the sand, and in moments of depression she saw… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share
The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God. — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share
“I already love in you your beauty, but I am only beginning to love in you that which is eternal and ever precious –… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share
“If you only knew what those society women are, and women in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial in everything—that's what… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share
To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds,… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share
Once we're thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost, but it's only here that the new and the good begins. — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share
“He knew she was there by the rapture and the terror that seized on his heart. She was standing talking to a lady at… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share
“He was not to blame for being born with an irrepressible charachter and a mind some how constrained.” — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share
I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do. But if even that cannot be, command… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share
The idea shared by many that life is a vale of tears is just as false as the idea shared by the great majority,… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share
To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share
