Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

the same question arose in every soul: For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?... p982

And indeed, if Eugene Iretnev was mentally deranged when he committed this crime, then everyone is similarly insane. The most mentally deranged people are certainly those who see in others indications of insanity they do not notice in themselves.

The coffee was never served. It boiled over, spattered them all, and wet a costly tablecloth and the baronesss dress. But it served the end that was desired for it gave rise to many jests and merry peals of laughter.

I consider jealousy a humiliating and degrading feeling, and I shall never allow myself to be influenced by it.

He was nine years old; he was a child; he he knew his own soul, it was precious to him, he guarded it as the eyelid guards the eye, and without the key of love he let no one into his soul.

Why nowadays theres a new fashion every day.

He was a passionate adherent of the new ideas and of Speransky, and the busiest purveyor of news in Petersburg, one of those men who choose their opinions like their clothes—according to the fashion—but for that very reason seem the most vehement partisans

He never chooses an opinion, he just wears whatever happens to be in style.

There will be today, there will be tomorrow, there will be always, and there was yesterday, and there was the day before...

As often happens between people who have chosen different ways, each of them, while rationally justifying the others activity, despised it in his heart. To each of them it seemed that the life he led was the only real life, and the one his friend led was a mere illusion.

Its not given to people to judge whats right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.

He stepped down, avoiding any long look at her as one avoids long looks at the sun, but seeing her as one sees the sun, without looking.

But thats the whole aim of civilization: to make everything a source of enjoyment.

Man can be master of nothing while he fears death, but he who does not fear it possesses all. If there were no suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself. The hardest thing is to be able in your soul to unite the meaning of all. To unite all? Pierre asked himself. No, not to unite. Thoughts cannot be united, but to harness all these thoughts together is what we need! Yes, one must harness them, must harness them!

Well, what of it? Ive not given up thinking of death. Its true that its high time I was dead; and that all this is nonsense. Its the truth Im telling you. I do value my idea and my work awfully; but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have something great - ideas, work - its all dust and ashes.

Patriotism in its simplest, clearest and most indubitable signification is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason, conscience, and a slavish enthrallment to those in power.

It would, therefore, seem obvious that patriotism as a feeling is bad and harmful, and as a doctrine is stupid. For it is clear that if each people and each State considers itself the best of peoples and States, they all live in a gross and harmful delusion.

Patriotism , as a feeling of exclusive love for ones own people, and as a doctrine of tile virtue of sacrificing ones tranquillity, ones property, and ever, ones life, in defence of ones own people from slaughter and outrage by their enemies, was the highest idea of the period when each nation considered it feasible and just, for its own advantage, to subject to slaughter and outrage the people of other nations.

Patriotism and its results--wars--give an enormous revenue to the newspaper trade, and profits to many other trades. Every writer, teacher, and professor is more secure in his place the more he preaches patriotism. Every Emperor and King obtains the more fame the more he is addicted to patriotism.

The ruling classes have in their hands the army, money, the schools, the churches, and the press. In the schools, they kindle patriotism in the children by means of histories describing their own people as the best of all peoples and always in the right. Among adults they kindle it by spectacles, jubilees, monuments, and by a lying patriotic press. Above all, they inflame patriotism in this way: perpetrating every kind of harshness and injustice against other nations, they provoke in them enmity towards their own people, and then in turn exploit that enmity to embitter their people against the foreigner.