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…the majority of men do not think in order to know the truth, but in order to assure themselves that the life which they lead, and which is agreeable and habitual to them, is the one which coincides with the truth.

Leo Tolstoy

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Leo Tolstoy
Age: 82 †
Born: 1828
Born: January 1
Died: 1910
Died: January 1
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By digging into our souls, we often dig up what might better have remained there unnoticed. Alexis Alexandrovich
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If a man does not work at necessary and good things, then he will work at unnecessary and stupid things
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Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?
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We acknowledge God only when we are conscious of His manifestation in us.
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To get rid of an enemy one must love him.
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From the self-confidence with which he spoke no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid.
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Every reform by violence is to be deprecated, because it does little to correct the evil while men remain as they are, and because wisdom has no need of violence.
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Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of people--that's in your hands.
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Just when the question of how to live had become clearer to him, a new insoluble problem presented itself - Death.
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So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and for what purpose he had been placed in the word.
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Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.
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In order to obtain and hold power a man must love it. Thus the effort to get it is not likely to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities of pride, craft and cruelty.
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All men's instincts, all their impulses in life, are efforts to increase their freedom. Wealth and poverty, health and disease, culture and ignorance, labor and leisure, repletion and hunger, virtue and vice, are all terms for greater or less degree of freedom.
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You see, if you take pains and learn in order to get a reward, the work will seem hard but when you work... if you love your work, you will find your reward in that.
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A monkey was carrying two handfuls of peas. One little pea dropped out. He tried to pick it up, and split twenty. He tried to pick up the twenty, and split them all. Then he lost his temper, scattered the peas in all directions and ran away
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Each person's task in life is to become an increasingly better person.
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As often happens between men who have chosen different pursuits, each, while in argument justifying the other's activity, despised it in the depth of his heart.
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The subject of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch and pin down in words--that is, to describe directly the life, not only of humanity, but even of a single people, appears to be impossible.
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The life of our class, of the wealthy and the learned, was not only repulsive to me but had lost all meaning. The sum of our action and thinking, of our science and art, all of it struck me as the overindulgences of a spoiled child.
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It seldom happens that a man changes his life through his habitual reasoning. No matter how fully he may sense the new plans and aims revealed to him by reason, he continues to plod along in old paths until his life becomes frustrating and unbearable-he finally makes the change only when his usual life can no longer be tolerated.
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