Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

“In everything, almost in everything, I wrote I was guided by the need of collecting ideas which, linked together, would be the expression of myself, though each individual idea, expressed separatel...”

“I was wrong when I said that I did not regret the past. I do regret it; I weep for the past love which can never return. Who is to blame, I do not know. Love remains, but not the old love; its plac...”

“Natasha, in her lilac silk dress trimmed with black lace walked, as women can walk, with the more repose and stateliness the greater the pain and shame in her soul.”

“God gave the day, God gave the strength.”

“Darkness had fallen upon everything for him; but just because of this darkness he felt that the one guiding clue in the darkness was his work, and he clutched it and clung to it with all his strength.”

“Society in itself is no great harm, but unsatisfied social aspirations are a bad and ugly business. We must certainly accept, and we will.”

“Just imagine the existence of a man - let us call him A - who has left youth far behind, and of a woman whom we may call B, who is young and happy and has seen nothing as yet of life or of the worl...”

“The worker picked up Pakhoms spade, dug a grave, and buried him - six feet from head to heel, exactly the amount of land a man needs.”

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

“True life is lived when tiny changes occur.”

“I know that most mennot only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever, and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic problemscan very seldo...”

“If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect.”

“Without the support from religion--remember, we talked about it--no father, using only his own resources, would be able to bring up a child.”

“Whatever our destiny is or may be, we have made it ourselves, and we do not complain of it.”

“All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.”

“Well, pray if you like, only you'd do better to use your judgment.”

“To know God and to live is one and the same thing. God is life.”

“The old oak, utterly transformed, draped in a tent of sappy dark green, basked faintly, undulating in the rays of the evening sun. Of the knotted fingers, the gnarled excrecenses, the aged grief an...”

“Her eyes, always sad, now looked into the mirror with particular hopelessness. "She's flattering me," thought the princess, and she turned away and went on reading. Julie, however, was not flatteri...”

“You are all misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived. The sun does not go round the earth, but the earth goes round the sun, revolving as it goes, and turning towards the sun in the cour...”