Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

When the peasants and their song had vanished from his sight and hearing, a heavy feeling of anguish at his loneliness, his bodily idleness, his hostility to this world, came over him...It was all drowned in the sea of cheerful common labor. God had given the day, God had given the strength. Both day and strength had been devoted to labour and in that lay the reward...Levin had often admired this life, had often experienced a feeling of envy for the people who lived this life, but that day for the first time...the thought came clearly to Levin that it was up to him to change that so burdensome, idle, artificial and individual life he lived into this laborious, pure and common, lovely life.

Just when the question of how to live had become clearer to him, a new insoluble problem presented itself - Death.

Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered.

The Lord had given them the day and the Lord had given them the strength. And the day and the strength had been dedicated to labor, and the labor was its reward. Who was the labor for? What would be its fruits? These were irrelevant and idle questions.

Perhaps its because I appreciate all I have so much that I dont worry about what I havent got.

...there was apparent in all a sort of anxiety, a softening of the heart, and a consciousness of some great, unfathomable mystery being accomplished... the most solemn mystery in the world was being accomplished. Evening passed, night came on. And the feeling of suspense and softening of the heart before the unfathomable did not wane, but grew more intense. No one slept.

The very same thing, dont you see, may be looked at tragically, and turned into a misery, or it may be looked at simply and even humorously. Possibly you are inclined to look at things too tragically.

A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, Today Im going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.

The animalism of the brute nature in man is disgusting, he thought, but as long as it remains in its naked form we observe it from the height of our spiritual life and despise it; and - whether one has fallen or resisted - one remains what one was before. But when that same animalism hides under a cloak of poetry and aesthetic feeling and demands our worship - then we are swallowed up by it completely and worship animalism, no longer distinguishing good from evil. Then it is awful!

A man could not be prevented from making himself a big wax doll, and kissing it. But if the man were to come with the doll and sit before a man in love, and begin caressing his doll as the lover caressed the woman he loved, it would be distastefulto the lover. Just such a distasteful sensation was what Mihailov felt at the sight of Vronsky’s painting: he felt it both ludicrous and irritating, both pitiable and offensive.

They were dealt with as in war, and they naturally employed the means that were used against them.

The two girls used to meet several times a day, and every time they met, Kittys eyes said: Who are you? What are you? Are you really the exquisite creature I imagine you to be? But for goodness sake dont suppose, her eyes added, that I would force my acquaintance on you, I simply admire you and like you.I like you too, and youre very, very sweet. And I should like you better still, if I had time, answered the eyes of the unknown girl.

Be bad, but at least dont be a liar, a deceiver!

This is dreadful! Not the suffering and death of the animals, but that man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity—that of sympathy and pity toward living creatures like himself—and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel. And how deeply seated in the human heart is the injunction not to take life!

Read the best books first, otherwise you’ll find you do not have time. - Henry David Thoreau

What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the world!

I keep finding myself confronted with the question, “What is the aim of man’s life?” and, no matter what result my reflections reach, no matter what I take to be life’s source, I invariably arrive at the conclusion that the purpose of our human existence is to afford a maximum of help towards the universal development of everything that exists.If I meditate as I contemplate nature, I perceive everything in nature to be in constant process of development, and each of nature’s constituent portions to be unconsciously contributing towards the development of others. But man is, though a like portion of nature, a portion gifted with consciousness, and therefore bound, like the other portions, to make conscious use of his spiritual faculties in striving for the development of everything existent.If I meditate as I contemplate history, I perceive the whole human race to be for ever aspiring towards the same end.If I meditate on reason, if I pass in review man’s spiritual faculties, I find the soul of every man to have in it the same unconscious aspiration, the same imperative demand of the spirit.If I meditate with an eye upon the history of philosophy, I find everywhere, and always, men to have arrived at the conclusion that the aim of human life is the universal development of humanity.If I meditate with an eye upon theology, I find almost every nation to be cognizant of a perfect existence towards which it is the aim of mankind to aspire.So I too shall be safe in taking for the aim of my existence a conscious striving for the universal development of everything existent. I should be the unhappiest of mortals if I could not find a purpose for my life, and a purpose at once universal and useful… Wherefore henceforth all my life must be a constant, active striving for that one purpose.

My field was God’s earth. Wherever I ploughed, there was my field. Land was free. It was a thing no man called his own. Labor was the only thing men called their own.

he was one of those diplomats who like and know how to work, and, despite his laziness, he occasionally spent nights at his desk.

He disliked contradiction, and still more, arguments that were continually skipping from one thing to another, introducing new and disconnected points, so that there was no knowing to which to reply.