“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
Leo Tolstoy4 likes
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”
“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”
“I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.”
“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.”
“Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.”
“And all people live, Not by reason of any care they have for themselves, But by the love for them that is in other people.”
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
“If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.”
“Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live.”
“All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
“Music is the shorthand of emotion.”
“In actuality, it was like the homes of all people who are not really rich but who want to look rich, and therefore end up looking like one another: it had damasks, ebony, plants, carpets, and bronzes, everything dark and gleaming—all the effects a certain class of people produce so as to look like people of a certain class. And his place looked so much like the others that it would never have been noticed, though it all seemed quite exceptional to him.”
“To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.”
“It never before happened that the rich ruling and more educated minority, which has the most influence on the masses, not only disbelieved the existing religion but was convinced that no religion is no longer needed.”
“Work is the inevitable condition of human life, the true source of human welfare.”
“Here I am...wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end--that there is such a thing as death.”
“The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God.”
“We are asleep until we fall in Love!”
“Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.”
“Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.”
“He is not apprehended by reason, but by life.”
“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”
“If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good, and man's highest happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must live, we must love, and we must believe that we live not only today on this scrap of earth, but have lived and shall live”
“One must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible. I'm alive and it's not my fault, which means I must somehow go on living the best I can, without bothering anybody, until I die.' 'But what makes you live? With such thoughts, you'll sit without moving, without undertaking anything...' 'Life won't leave one alone as it is.”
“Love those you hate you.”
“truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.”
“In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.”
“I am used to praying when I am alone, thank God. But when I come together with other people, when I need more than ever to pray, I still cannot get used to it.”
“He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.”
“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.”
“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.”
“A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.”
“Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it.”
“Where there has been true science, art has always been its exponent.”
“It was long before I could believe that human learning had no clear answer to this question. For a long time it seemed to me, as I listened to the gravity and seriousness wherewith Science affirmed its positions on matters unconnected with the problem of life, that I must have misunderstood something. For a long time I was timid in the presence in learning, and I fancied that the insufficiency of the answers which I received was not its fault, but was owing to my own gross ignorance, but this thing was not a joke or a pastime with me, but the business of my life, and I was at last forced, willy-nilly, to the conclusion that these questions of mine were the only legitimate questions underlying all knowledge, and that it was not I that was in fault in putting them, but science in pretending to have an answer for them.”
“My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfilment of which I could consider reasonable. If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires I should not have known what to ask. If in moments of intoxication I felt something which, though not a wish, was a habit left by former wishes, in sober moments I knew this to be a delusion and that there was really nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guess of what it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless.”
“You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.”
“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt it in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.”
“We walked to meet each other up at the time of our love and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions, and there's no altering that.”
“Well, pray if you like, only you'd do better to use your judgment.”
“Vronsky saw nothing and no one. He felt himself as a king, not because she had made an impression on Anna-he did not yet believe that-but because the impression she had made on him gave him happiness and pride.”
“To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.”
“Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, that's like supposing the same candle could last you all your life”
“At the time we were all convinced that we had to speak, write,and publish as quickly as possible and as much as possible and that this was necessary for the good of mankind. Thousands of us published and wrote in an effort to teach others, all the while disclaiming and abusing one another. Without taking note of the fact that we knew nothing, that we did not know the answer to the simplest question of life, the question of what is right and what is wrong, we all went on talking without listening to one another.”
“There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.”
“There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.”
“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.”