S., a clever and truthful man, once told me the story of how he ceased to believe. On a hunting expedition, when he was already twenty-six, he once, at the place where they put up for the night, knelt down in the evening to pray -- a habit retained from childhood. His elder brother, who was at the hunt with him, was lying on some hay and watching him. When S. had finished and was settling down for the night, his brother said to him: 'So you still do that?' They said nothing more to one another. But from that day S. ceased to say his prayers or go to church. And now he has not prayed, received communion, or gone to church, for thirty years. And this not because he knows his brother's convictions and has joined him in them, nor because he has decided anything in his own soul, but simply because the word spoken by his brother was like the push of a finger on a wall that was ready to fall by its own weight. The word only showed that where he thought there was faith, in reality there had long been an empty space, and that therefore the utterance of words and the making of signs of the cross and genuflections while praying were quite senseless actions. Becoming conscious of their senselessness he could not continue them.
Leo Tolstoy
Related I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES His friends told him that nobody was interested in his goddam soul unless it was the priest and he m... FLANNERY O'CONNOR And in an essential way, this was what he was most ashamed of: not his poor understanding of sex, no... HANYA YANAGIHARA It was a cold morning, and he shivered a little; but he had been taught by his uncle that his prayer... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM (On WWI:) A man of importance had been shot at a place I could not pronounce in Swahili o... BERYL MARKHAM He's for you and wants to help you be the person He created you to be. CRAIG GROESCHEL His habit of reading isolated him: it became such a need that after being in company for some time h... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I'm serious, Harry, don't go." But Harry only had one thought in his head, which was to get back in ... J.K. ROWLING Feast of Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down & Connor, Priest, Teacher, 1667 Commemoration of Florence Ni... JEREMY TAYLOR There was a man here, lashed himself to a spar as his ship went down, and for seven days and seven n... JEANETTE WINTERSON He ran as he'd never run before, with neither hope nor despair. He ran because the world was divided... KARL MARLANTES Looking at him she felt she knew what the people of antiquity had been like. Thirty centuries or mor... PAUL BOWLES At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings... AYN RAND Now they came back to him, on this night he was seventeen years old. All the years and places of his... URSULA K. LE GUIN But he was no longer in Tollygunge. He had stepped out of it as he had stepped so many mornings out ... JHUMPA LAHIRI There was no meaning in life, and man by living served no end. It was immaterial whether he was born... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM He was a hero to his valet, who bullied him, and a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied ... OSCAR WILDE And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciple... BIBLE He was astonished at how calm he found he was. Fear of death had always energised him, making him mo... K.J. PARKER And Harry saw very clearly as he sat there under the hot sun how people who cared about him had stoo... J.K. ROWLING You're right,' said the corporal. 'It serves editors like that right. They only stir the people up. ... JAROSLAV HAšEK He shook his head in disbelief. He would cook and take her to his place. He was about to break two o... MARCIA WEBER MARTINS He had just brought back a Central Asian Shepherd dog for my parents and a ring that was a gift from... JENNIFER WESTER He made a pit and digged it. He was cunning in his plans and industrious in his labors. He stooped t... CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON Feast of the Conversion of Paul The God of Pharisaism was like the God of the Deists, He stood al... C. H. DODD And Harry remembered his first nightmarish trip into the forest, the first time he had ever encounte... J.K. ROWLING We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as t... CHIEF SEATTLE The marquis de Carabas was not a good man, and he knew himself well enough to be perfectly certain t... NEIL GAIMAN Will knelt beside me. I wished I could have taken a holo of him at that moment and played it for him... CAMERON STRACHER I thought he was OK, but he stopped breathing and they had to put him on a respirator. When I was ab... CODY COLVIN We don't know how the fire started. He (Hinton) said that he left the hotel and went to KFC to get s... GERRY MCGHEE ...He was a greater craftsman even than Isaac, and he knew it, and so, presently, did Isaac. ELIZABETH GOUDGE was at playtime. Big Joe came up to school to see Charlie and me. He just stood and watched us from ... MICHAEL MORPURGO They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been ... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because hi... BIBLE He had no faintest conception till that very hour of how they would look, and even doubted their exi... C.S. LEWIS I asked him if it were a mirage, and he said yes. I said it was a dream, and he agreed, But said it ... NEIL GAIMAN For the song 'Truth or Consequence,' me and [bassist Mick Morris] had this friend from Salt Lake Cit... JAMES HART He wasn't normally conscious of it, but there was one part of his body that was extremely sensitive,... HARUKI MURAKAMI According to his brother Stanislaus . . . 'Unhappiness was like a vice.' He was cold and distant exc... JAMES JOYCE He had learned some of the things that every man must find out for himself, and he had found out abo... THOMAS WOLFE He was about to go home, about to return to the place where he had had a family. It was in Godric’... J.K. ROWLING It had belonged to that idea of the exasperated consciousness of his victim to become a real test fo... HENRY JAMES It's like when my doctor told me the story of these two brothers whose dad was a bad alcoholic. One ... STEPHEN CHBOSKY What grief is not taken away by time? What passion will survive an unequal battle with it? I knew a ... NIKOLAI GOGOL [T]his jealousy gave him, if anything, an agreeable chill, as, to the sad Parisian who is leaving Ve... MARCEL PROUST They were living to themselves: self, with its hopes, and promises, and dreams, still had hold of th... ELIZABETH PAYSON PRENTISS But they were not living, thought Harry: They were gone. The empty words could not disguise the fact... J.K. ROWLING And not only of even mainly because of the protection it had given him - it was thanks to his own st... MICHAEL ENDE His joy was somewhat sullied by immediate awareness that his brother did not fully share it . . .... ROBERT A. HEINLEIN The cover was pebbled black leather, the pages onionskin, and he opened it carefully. It was his fir... CHARLES L. GRANT He felt light, lighter than ever in all his years. He had severed all relationships. It occurred to ... JOSEPH ROTH ....Then he felt quite ashamed, and hid his head under his wing; for he did not know what to do, he ... HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN Whenever one speaks of lonely people one takes too much for granted. One thinks people all know what... RAINER MARIA RILKE There were so many different moods and impressions that he wished to express in verse. He felt them ... JAMES JOYCE We stopped to browse in the cases, and now that William - with his new glasses on his nose - could l... UMBERTO ECO His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one ti... ERNEST HEMINGWAY He was lonely because he could imagine himself as anything but himself and as anywhere but where he ... WENDELL BERRY His brother Brandon told him to stop playing with the gun; that's when the gun went off, ... He said... JAMES KENNEDY You differ from a great man in only one respect: the great man was once a very little man, but he de... WILHELM REICH You may fancy the Lord had His own power to fall back upon. But that would have been to Him just the... GEORGE MACDONALD The Ass and His Purchaser
A MAN wished to purchase an Ass, and agreed with its owner that
he should... AESOP I had a best friend once 20 years down the line a friendship that you just do not get now, i regarde... GARY F EVANS... A parabatai. Like he was. And Jace knew, too, what that faded rune meant: a parabatai whose other ha... CASSANDRA CLARE As they scuffled in the grass, Adam closed his eyes and leaned his head back. He could nearly scry j... MAGGIE STIEFVATER No." Laurence said, "I mean to retire when we have returned. I have enough money to keep Temeraire n... NAOMI NOVIK She fit her head under his chin, and he could feel her weight settle into him. He held her tight and... CHARLES FRAZIER Once there was a boy,” said Jace. Clary interrupted immediately. “A Shadowhunter boy?... CASSANDRA CLARE As miserable as Gregor felt about being dumped with a rat, his heart ached for Vikus. He wanted to s... SUZANNE COLLINS Because the man who stood there before us was not our father. He was somebody else, a stranger who h... JULIE OTSUKA ...his soul (was) ringing like a well-struck bell. But it was a bell that rang with more than joy an... PAUL HOFFMAN They were satisfied with their lives which had none of the vibrance his own was taking on. And he wa... LOIS LOWRY The perfection of His relation to us swallows up all our imperfections, all our defeats, all our evi... GEORGE MACDONALD My father was a man of great charity towards the poor, and compassion for the sick, and also for ser... SAINT TERESA OF AVILA ...when Clive stood from the piano and shuffled to the doorway to turn out the studio lights, and lo... IAN MCEWAN Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poem And he called it "Chops"... STEPHEN CHBOSKY And at that moment, Thibaut knew he was a murderer. He had murdered his brother that night; he had t... C. JOYBELL C. Keith had it a little better than most kids here because he had two parents in the same household wh... JEFF HILL THERE was a man in our town, and he was wondrous rich; He gave away his millions to the colleges... FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS He didn't. You know, he said he was being provocative. He has a background in philosophy and the ide... JAKE TAPPER Frodo drew the Ring out of his pocket again and looked at it. It now appeared plain and smooth, with... J.R.R. TOLKIEN Two years before, the man had ended my reign. I had been the semel of a tribe of werepanthers, leade... MARY CALMES My father's life was so decimated by his earliest experiences. His mother died when he was 7 yea... WALTER MOSLEY The Miser
A miser sold all that he had and bought a lump of gold, which he buried in a hole in the g... AESOP When I saw him at his best
When everything was at its worst
He has proven me and the rest of the wor... HEARTTOHEART THOUGHTS The Boasting Traveler
A man who had traveled in foreign lands boasted very much, on returning to his... AESOP The first time I saw Reverend Shuttlesworth, for example, he came strolling across the parking lot o... JAMES BALDWIN When I was a boy my grandfather died, and he was a sculptor. He was also a very kind man who had a l... RAY BRADBURY But we must believe that Judas, who repented even to agony, who repented so that his high-prized lif... GEORGE MACDONALD The Bible A young man from a wealthy family was about to graduate from high school. It was the custo... JACK CANFIELD Commemoration of John Calvin, renewer of the Church, 1564 Therefore Adam could have stood if he w... JOHN CALVIN He would talk, and I would talk, and he would talk, and each of our words sounded out the deepest se... DEXTER PALMER My brother was a big marathoner. He was a great collegiate runner at Beloit College. He won his conf... TATE DONOVAN 38. “A wet bird never flies at night.” (My grandfather said that to me when I was a child and wa... JAMES C. DOBSON And if Amsterdam was hell, and if hell was a memory, then he realized that perhaps there was some pu... PAUL AUSTER No, it had never been like this for him before, with anyone. Of all the women he’d known, she was ... J.D. ROBB He came to play every day. He was like Larry Bird in basketball. He was one of the first guys at pra... JACK MCMAHON He was hanging his head, his coat wouldn't turn - it was almost like he was depressed, ... Richard d... BOB BONE It came to him that he had turned away from the buffalo not because of a womanish nausea at blood an... JOHN WILLIAMS I watched the black ocean in his eyes and saw this flash behind them and understood what he had mean... T.J. KLUNE
More Leo Tolstoy
All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. LEO TOLSTOY The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity. LEO TOLSTOY Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not g... LEO TOLSTOY Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal. LEO TOLSTOY All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what ... LEO TOLSTOY One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken... LEO TOLSTOY Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six. LEO TOLSTOY He never chooses an opinion; he just wears whatever happens to be in style. LEO TOLSTOY Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it u... LEO TOLSTOY Music is the shorthand of emotion. LEO TOLSTOY True life is lived when tiny changes occur. LEO TOLSTOY Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, ev... LEO TOLSTOY All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. LEO TOLSTOY Only those live who do good. LEO TOLSTOY But the peasants -- how do the peasants die? LEO TOLSTOY He who has a mistaken idea of life, will always have a mistaken idea of death. LEO TOLSTOY A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workin... LEO TOLSTOY In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that th... LEO TOLSTOY There is one evident, indubitable manifestation of the Divinity, and that is the laws of right which... LEO TOLSTOY I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance ... LEO TOLSTOY it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it. LEO TOLSTOY True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the peopl... LEO TOLSTOY What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of wills transf... LEO TOLSTOY A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of hi... LEO TOLSTOY The only thing that we know is that we know nothing and that is the highest flight of human wisdom. LEO TOLSTOY I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom a... LEO TOLSTOY The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all ... LEO TOLSTOY To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as sayin... LEO TOLSTOY The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But ... LEO TOLSTOY Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver! LEO TOLSTOY The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the dem... LEO TOLSTOY But that's the whole aim of civilization: to make everything a source of enjoyment. LEO TOLSTOY I understood, not with my intellect but with my whole being, that no theories of the rationality of ... LEO TOLSTOY Anything is better than lies and deceit! LEO TOLSTOY Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to u... LEO TOLSTOY If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love. LEO TOLSTOY Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed. LEO TOLSTOY I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are... LEO TOLSTOY It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and wil... LEO TOLSTOY Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it. LEO TOLSTOY It's hard to love a woman and do anything. LEO TOLSTOY She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here... LEO TOLSTOY A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he parti... LEO TOLSTOY We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom. LEO TOLSTOY Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity... LEO TOLSTOY A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is e... LEO TOLSTOY In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you. LEO TOLSTOY Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. LEO TOLSTOY I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself. LEO TOLSTOY Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be. LEO TOLSTOY The best generals I have known were... stupid or absent-minded men. Not only does a good army comman... LEO TOLSTOY The strongest of all warriors are these two LEO TOLSTOY I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I ... LEO TOLSTOY A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally both in mind and body as irresisti... LEO TOLSTOY We lost because we told ourselves we lost. LEO TOLSTOY I am always with myself and it is I who am my tormentor. LEO TOLSTOY Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the state... LEO TOLSTOY The sobs and tears of joy he had not foreseen rose with such force within him that his whole body sh... LEO TOLSTOY In historic events, the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they ... LEO TOLSTOY There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are absent. LEO TOLSTOY The subject of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch and pin down in words--that ... LEO TOLSTOY Though it is possible to utter words only with the intention to fulfill the will of God, it is very ... LEO TOLSTOY What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness. LEO TOLSTOY He never chooses an opinion, he just wears whatever happens to be in style. LEO TOLSTOY All happy families are alike, but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion. LEO TOLSTOY Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wid... LEO TOLSTOY Joy can only be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in... LEO TOLSTOY Which is worse? the wolf who cries before
eating the lamb or the wolf who does not. LEO TOLSTOY I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom a... LEO TOLSTOY The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience. LEO TOLSTOY How can one be well...when one suffers morally? LEO TOLSTOY The Kingdom of God is within you.. and all beings. LEO TOLSTOY It seldom happens that a man changes his life through his habitual reasoning. No matter how fully he... LEO TOLSTOY Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. LEO TOLSTOY But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest. LEO TOLSTOY Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels? LEO TOLSTOY There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth. LEO TOLSTOY The two most powerful warriors are patience and time. LEO TOLSTOY There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth. LEO TOLSTOY War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within the... LEO TOLSTOY The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffer... LEO TOLSTOY It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. LEO TOLSTOY Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced. LEO TOLSTOY Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continue... LEO TOLSTOY Boredom: the desire for desires. LEO TOLSTOY If you want to be happy, be. LEO TOLSTOY Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible. LEO TOLSTOY He had never thought the question over clearly, but vaguely imagined that his wife had long suspecte... LEO TOLSTOY Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else i... LEO TOLSTOY Everything intelligent is so boring. LEO TOLSTOY I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others tha... LEO TOLSTOY Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us. LEO TOLSTOY Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the histori... LEO TOLSTOY A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he parti... LEO TOLSTOY The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their app... LEO TOLSTOY Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life ... LEO TOLSTOY An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes wit... LEO TOLSTOY Muhammad has always been standing higher than the Christianity. He does not consider god as a human ... LEO TOLSTOY If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the... LEO TOLSTOY All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade. LEO TOLSTOY Ah, if everyone was as sensitive as you! There's no girl who hasn't gone through that. And it's all ... LEO TOLSTOY He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the su... LEO TOLSTOY Himmlisch ist's wenn ich bezwungen Meine irdische Begier; Aber doch wenn's nich gelungen Hatt' ich a... LEO TOLSTOY If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed. LEO TOLSTOY Speransky, either because he appreciated Prince Andrey's abilities or because he thought it as well ... LEO TOLSTOY In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease ... LEO TOLSTOY He stepped down, avoiding any long look at her as one avoids long looks at the sun, but seeing her a... LEO TOLSTOY There will be today, there will be tomorrow, there will be always, and there was yesterday, and ther... LEO TOLSTOY We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrea... LEO TOLSTOY The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby jus... LEO TOLSTOY Crude, immoral, vulgar and senseless. LEO TOLSTOY Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not ... LEO TOLSTOY Life consists in penetrating the unknown, and fashioning our actions in accord with the new knowled... LEO TOLSTOY All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. LEO TOLSTOY Conceit is incompatible with understanding. LEO TOLSTOY Everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. LEO TOLSTOY Pure and complete sorrow is about as impossible as pure and complete joy. LEO TOLSTOY If one has no vanity in this life of ours, there is no sufficient reason for living. LEO TOLSTOY A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of hi... LEO TOLSTOY Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them. LEO TOLSTOY In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, inde... LEO TOLSTOY History would be wonderful thing - if it were only true. LEO TOLSTOY Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth. LEO TOLSTOY If we would only testify to the truth as we see it, it would turn out
that there are hundreds, thous... LEO TOLSTOY If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love. LEO TOLSTOY The only thing that we know is that we know nothing and that is the
highest flight of human wisdom. LEO TOLSTOY Governments need armies to protect them against their enslaved and oppressed subjects. LEO TOLSTOY The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the dem... LEO TOLSTOY If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once ... LEO TOLSTOY Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women. LEO TOLSTOY Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story. LEO TOLSTOY Music is the shorthand of emotion LEO TOLSTOY When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be. LEO TOLSTOY To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as sayin... LEO TOLSTOY I often think how unfairly life's good fortune is sometimes distributed. LEO TOLSTOY Boredom-the desire for desires. LEO TOLSTOY My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep, and I could not help doing thes... LEO TOLSTOY what time can be more beautiful than the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and ... LEO TOLSTOY But she was not even grateful to him for it; nothing good on Pierre's part seemed to her to be an ef... LEO TOLSTOY He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she beg... LEO TOLSTOY The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any id... LEO TOLSTOY [...most men do not try] to recognize the truth, but to persuade themselves that the life they are l... LEO TOLSTOY The history of mankind is crowded with evidences proving that physical coercion is not adapted to mo... LEO TOLSTOY Well, do you suppose I made up my mind then that what I had seen was something sickening? Not a bit ... LEO TOLSTOY Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless re... LEO TOLSTOY And not only the pride of intellect, but the stupidity of intellect. And, above all, the dishonesty,... LEO TOLSTOY There is a better way to do it; find it. sign Thomas Edison had hanging in his
office A fool vents ... LEO TOLSTOY God is the same everywhere. LEO TOLSTOY It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle. LEO TOLSTOY Animalele par să știe că progenitura le perpetuează specia și respectă o anumită lege în ace... LEO TOLSTOY Înainte mă simțeam stingher,chiar panicat,când vedeam o femeie dichisită,în rochie de bal,dar ... LEO TOLSTOY Este uimitor cât de răspândită este iluzia că frumusețea echivalează cu binele. LEO TOLSTOY Women have made of themselves such a weapon to act upon the senses that a young man, and even an old... LEO TOLSTOY Ah! you wish us to be only objects of sensuality? All right; by the aid of sensuality we will bend y... LEO TOLSTOY Women, especially those who have passed through the school of marriage, know very well that conversa... LEO TOLSTOY Never had I heard from my elders that what I thus did was bad. It is true that there are the ten com... LEO TOLSTOY In the city the wretched feel less sad. One can live there a hundred years without being noticed, an... LEO TOLSTOY The main thing, and the thing which such people as he do not understand," rejoined the lady, "is tha... LEO TOLSTOY Non si pone come regola, non si prescrive di essere casti; la castità è di per sé un ideale, o a ... LEO TOLSTOY What is music? What does it do to us? And why does it do to us what it does? People say that music h... LEO TOLSTOY Perhaps you think I'm losing the thread of my thought? Not a bit of it! I'm still telling you the st... LEO TOLSTOY Se poate afla cu ușurință cât fier și ce metale se găsesc în soare și în stele,dar să sco�... LEO TOLSTOY As soon as a young man advances toward a woman, directly he falls under the influence of this opium,... LEO TOLSTOY Every man experiences what you call love for every pretty woman and least of all for his wife. That ... LEO TOLSTOY [...] la schiavitù non è altro che il profitto di pochi del lavoro della massa. Perché la schiavi... LEO TOLSTOY They abolish the external form, they suppress the formal sales of slaves, and then they imagine and ... LEO TOLSTOY Te miri cum frumuseţea ne dă iluzia deplină a binelui. Când o femeie frumoasă îndrugă prostii... LEO TOLSTOY «But you are talking of physical love. Do you not admit a love based upon a conformity of ideals, o... LEO TOLSTOY Music makes me forget myself, my real position; it transports me to some other position not my own. ... LEO TOLSTOY Este incredibil cât de completă este iluzia care ne face să credem că frumuseţea este în gener... LEO TOLSTOY I killed the wife when I first tasted sensual joys without love, and then it was that I killed my wi... LEO TOLSTOY Another's wife is a white swan, and ours is bitter wormwood. LEO TOLSTOY Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, that's like supposing the same candle could last yo... LEO TOLSTOY I wanted to run after him, but remembered that it is ridiculous to run after one's wife's lover in o... LEO TOLSTOY It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. A handsome woman talks nonsense,... LEO TOLSTOY Music makes me forget my real situation. It transports me into a state which is not my own. Under th... LEO TOLSTOY Love does not exist. There exists the physical need for intercourse, and the rational need for a mat... LEO TOLSTOY Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture, so I need an inn... LEO TOLSTOY While I doubted, I had hope; but now there is no hope left and all the same I doubt everything. LEO TOLSTOY Let fear once get possession of the soul, and it does not readily yield its place to another sentime... LEO TOLSTOY You think that your laws correct evil - they only increase it. There is but one way to end evil - by... LEO TOLSTOY Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult. LEO TOLSTOY But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable. LEO TOLSTOY In all human sorrow nothing gives comfort but love and faith, and that in the sight of Christ's comp... LEO TOLSTOY But that had been grief--this was joy. Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the ordina... LEO TOLSTOY The latter part of her stay in Voronezh had been the happiest period in Princess Marya's life. Her l... LEO TOLSTOY Spring is the time of plans and projects. LEO TOLSTOY He disliked contradiction, and still more, arguments that were continually skipping from one thing t... LEO TOLSTOY If there was a reason why he preferred the liberal tendency to the conservative one (also held to by... LEO TOLSTOY Music makes me forget myself, my true condition, it carries me off into another state of being, one ... LEO TOLSTOY I'm like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he's cold, and his clothes are torn, and he's... LEO TOLSTOY All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town. LEO TOLSTOY Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was... LEO TOLSTOY Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had... LEO TOLSTOY In infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is formed a bubble organism, and that bubbl... LEO TOLSTOY Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was ... LEO TOLSTOY You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love... LEO TOLSTOY He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happines... LEO TOLSTOY One must be cunning and wicked in this world. LEO TOLSTOY The only happy marriages I know are arranged ones. LEO TOLSTOY