Leo Tolstoy, War And Peace Quotes
Spring, love, happiness! Are you not weary of that stupid, meaningless, constantly repeated fraud? Always the same and always a fraud! There is no spring, no sun, no happiness!
He never chooses an opinion, he just wears whatever happens to be in style.
Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it.
Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself.
Those are the men, ' added Bolkonsky with a sigh which he could not suppress, as they went out of the palace, 'those are the men who decide the fate of nations.
There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.
You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom.
I think that when you remember, remember, remember everything like that, you could go on until you remember what was there before you were in the world.
In the legal respect, after the execution of the supposed incendiaries, the other half of Moscow burned down.
This history of culture will explain to us the motives, the conditions of life, and the thought of the writer or reformer.
the same question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?"... p982
Power is the sum total of the wills of the mass, transfered by express or tactic agreement to rulers chosen by the masses.
He had learned that, as there is no situation in the world in which a man can be happy and perfectly free, so there is no situation in which he can be perfectly unhappy and unfree.
There lay between them, separating them, that same terrible line of the unknown and of fear, like the line separating the living from the dead.
Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she would not be happy
It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else's mistakes.
In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive.
A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body.
Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the achievement of historical, universally human goals.
Man lives consciously for himself but unconsciously he serves as an instrument for the accomplishment of historical and social ends.
...suffering and freedom have their limits...those limits are very near together.
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.
he was one of those diplomats who like and know how to work, and, despite his laziness, he occasionally spent nights at his desk.
There will be today, there will be tomorrow, there will be always, and there was yesterday, and there was the day before...
If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.
In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning.
It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.
We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.
Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered.
Men always did and always will err and nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.