Leo Tolstoy

I often think how unfairly life's good fortune is sometimes distributed.

Without the support from religion--remember, we talked about it--no father, using only his own resources, would be able to bring up a child.

There are no conditions to which a man cannot get accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.

It's hard to love a woman and do anything.

I'm like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he's cold, and his clothes are torn, and he's ashamed, but he's not unhappy.

They've got no idea what happiness is, they don't know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us--there is no life.

I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.

Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallpox.

What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of wills transferred to one person. On what condition are the willso fo the masses transferred to one person? On condition that the person express the will of the whole people. That is, power is power. That is, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.

When politics and home life have become one and the same thing, [...] then,[...] it is evident that we will be in a state of total liberty or anarchy.

All the stories and descriptions of that time without exception peak only of the patriotism, self-sacrifice, despair, grief, and heroism of the Russians. But in reality it was not like that...The majority of the people paid no attention to the general course of events but were influenced only by their immediate personal interests.