Leo Tolstoy

I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.

Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.

You're not going to be different ... you're going to be the same as you've always been; with doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation, of a happiness which you won't get, and which isn't possible for you.

People of limited intelligence are fond of talking about "these days," imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of "these days" and that human nature changes with the times.

The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good.

A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body.

In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive.

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.

Power is the sum total of the wills of the mass, transfered by express or tactic agreement to rulers chosen by the masses.

The subject of history is the life of peoples and mankind.

The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the greater the number of people he is connected with, the more power he has over other people, the more obvious is the predestination and inevitability of his every action.

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.

Kings are the slaves of history.

Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it.

I'm getting old, that's the thing! What's in me now won't be there anymore.

Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult.

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.

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

Everything depends on upbringing.

He is not apprehended by reason, but by life.

Here's my advice to you: don't marry until you can tell yourself that you've done all you could, and until you've stopped loving the women you've chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you'll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you're old and good for nothing...Otherwise all that's good and lofty in you will be lost.