The collection / 412 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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412 results · Page 13 of 18Play this collection ▷

01c. 1869 AD

He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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02c. 1869 AD

Where did I get it from? Was it by reason that I attained to the knowledge that I must love my neighbour and not throttle him? They told me so when I was a child, and I gladly believed it, because they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason! Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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03c. 1869 AD

I realized that even if all the people in the world from the day of creation found this to be necessary according to whatever theory, I knew that it was not necessary and that it was wrong. Therefore, my judgements must be based on what is right and necessary and not on what people say and do; I must judge not according to progress but according to my own heart.

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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04c. 1869 AD

what time can be more beautiful than the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute the sole motives of your life?

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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05c. 1869 AD

I often think with regret of that fresh, beautiful feeling of boundless, disinterested love which came to an end without having ever found self-expression or return. It is strange how, when a child, I always longed to be like grown-up people, and yet how I have often longed, since childhood's days, for those days to come back to me!

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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06c. 1869 AD

What better time is there in our lives than when the two best of virtues-innocent gaiety and a boundless yearning for affection-are our sole objects of pursuit?

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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07c. 1869 AD

Not having yet passed through those bitter experiences which enforce upon older years circumspection and coldness, I deprived myself of the pure delight of a fresh, childish instinct for the absurd purpose of trying to resemble grown-up people.

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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08c. 1869 AD

With all my soul I wished to be good, but I was young, passionate and alone, completely alone when I sought goodness. Every time I tried to express my most sincere desire, which was to be morally good, I met with contempt and ridicule, but as soon as I yielded to low passions I was praised and encouraged.

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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09c. 1869 AD

He was in a fairy kingdom where everything was possible.He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm like the earth. It was clearing, and over the tops of the trees clouds were swiftly sailing as if unveiling the stars.

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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10c. 1869 AD

everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait . . . there is nothing stronger than these two: patience and time, they will do it all.

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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11c. 1869 AD

Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow - that is patience. The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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12c. 1869 AD

oh God! what am I to do if I love nothing but fame and men's esteem?

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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13c. 1869 AD

But perhaps it is always so, that men form their conceptions from fictitious, conventional types, and then—all the combinations made—they are tired of the fictitious figures and begin to invent more natural, true figures.

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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14c. 1869 AD

I assure you that I sleep anywhere, and always like a dormouse.

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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15c. 1869 AD

He felt what a murderer must feel, when he sees the body he has robbed of life. That body, robbed by him of life, was their love, the first stage of their love. There was something awful and revolting in the memory of what had been bought at this fearful price of shame. Shame at their spiritual nakedness crushed her and infected him.

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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16c. 1869 AD

It hurt her to stir up these feelings, but yet she knew that that was the best part of her soul, and that that part of her soul would quickly be smothered in the life she was leading.

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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17c. 1869 AD

Happiness is pleasure without regret

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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18c. 1869 AD

She did not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could not talk of outside matters.

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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19c. 1869 AD

If a man aspires to a righteous life, his first act of abstinence if from injury to animals.

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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20c. 1869 AD

Perhaps you think I'm losing the thread of my thought? Not a bit of it! I'm still telling you the story of how I murdered my wife, They asked me in court how I killed her, what I used to do it with. Imbeciles! They thought I killed her that day, the fifth of October, with a knife. It wasn't that day I killed her, it was much earlier. Exactly in the same way as they're killing their wives now, all of them...

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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21c. 1869 AD

I understood, not with my intellect but with my whole being, that no theories of the rationality of existence or of progress could justify such an act; I realized that even if all the people in the world from the day of creation found this to be necessary according to whatever theory, I knew that it was not necessary and that it was wrong. Therefore, my judgments must be based-on what is right and necessary and not on what people say and do; I must judge not according to progress but according to my own heart.

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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22c. 1869 AD

My belief assumed a form that it commonly assumes among the educated people of our time. This belief was expressed by the word "progress." At the time it seemed to me that this word had meaning. Like any living individual, I was tormented by questions of how to live better. I still had not understood that in answering that one must live according to progress, I was talking just like a person being carried along in a boat by the waves and the wind; without really answering, such a person replies to the only important question-"Where are we to steer?"-by saying, "We are being carried somewhere.

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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23c. 1869 AD

During this journey it was as if he again thought over his whole life and reached the same old comforting and hopeless conclusion: that there was no need for him to start anything, that he had to live out his life without doing evil, without anxiety, and without wishing for anything.

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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24c. 1869 AD

The memories of home and of her children rose up in her imagination with a peculiar charm quite new to her, with a sort of new brilliance. That world of her own seemed quite new to her now so sweet and precious that she would not on any account spend an extra day outside it, and she made up her mind that she would certainly go back next day.

Leo Tolstoy / quote

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