Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace (1869)

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For us, with the rule of right and wrong given us by Christ, there is nothing for which we have no standard. And there is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.

Leo Tolstoy
Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.

Leo Tolstoy
In historical events great men — so-called — are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.

Leo Tolstoy
He had the unlucky capacity many men have of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to take any serious part in it.

Leo Tolstoy
In historical events great men—so called—are but the labels that serve to give a name to an event, and like labels, they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.

Leo Tolstoy
He did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart from their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation of an activity unknown to him, which was his life.

Leo Tolstoy
Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy.

Leo Tolstoy
Three days afterwards the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrey went to the steps of the tomb to take his last farewell of her. Even in the coffin the face was the same, though the eyes were closed. "Ah, what have you done to me?" it still seemed to say.

Leo Tolstoy
He felt like a man who, after straining his eyes to peer into the remote distance, finds what he was seeking at his very feet. All his life he had been looking over the heads of those around him, while he had only to look before him without straining his eyes.

Leo Tolstoy
Even in the best, most friendly, and simple relations of life, praise and commendation are essential, just as grease is necessary to wheels that they may run smoothly.

Leo Tolstoy
Power, from the standpoint of experience, is merely the relation that exists between the expression of someone's will and the execution of that will by others.

Leo Tolstoy
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.

Leo Tolstoy
We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is happiness. There is much, much before us.

Leo Tolstoy
There will be today, there will be tomorrow, there will be always, and there was yesterday, and there was the day before...

Leo Tolstoy
If every man could act as he chose, the whole of history would be a tissue of disconnected accidents.

Leo Tolstoy
Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.

Leo Tolstoy
The botanist who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue decays and so forth is equally right with the child who stands under the tree and says the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it.

Leo Tolstoy
The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness.

Leo Tolstoy
It seems as though mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and forgiveness of injuries—and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing one another.

Leo Tolstoy
Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history.

Leo Tolstoy
The peculiar and amusing nature of those answers stems from the fact that modern history is like a deaf person who is in the habit of answering questions that no one has put to them.
If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement of humanity and of the peoples, the first question — in the absence of a reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible — is: what is the power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously replies either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was very proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books.
All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it is not what was asked.

Leo Tolstoy
What is bad? What is good? What should one love, what hate? Why live, and what am I? What is lie, what is death? What power rules over everything?" he asked himself. And there was no answer to any of these questions except one, which was not logical and was not at all an answer to these questions. This answer was: "You will die—and everything will end. You will die and learn everything—or stop asking.

Leo Tolstoy
If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.

Leo Tolstoy
The old man... used to say that a nap "after dinner was silver—before dinner, golden."

Leo Tolstoy
Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and truth.

Leo Tolstoy