Love By Tolstoy Quotes & Sayings

I know a gallant steed by tokens sure, And by his eyes I know a youth in love, — Leo Tolstoy

He felt what a murderer must feel, when he sees the body he has robbed of life. That body, robbed by him of life, was their love, the first stage of their love. There was something awful and revolting in the memory of what had been bought at this fearful price of shame. Shame at their spiritual nakedness crushed her and infected him. — Leo Tolstoy

Pierre's insanity consisted in not waiting, as he used to do, to discover personal attributes which he termed "good qualities" in people before loving them; his heart was now overflowing with love, and by loving people without cause he discovered indubitable causes for loving them. — Leo Tolstoy

I saw that all who do not profess an identical faith with themselves are considered by the Orthodox to be heretics, just as the Catholics and others consider the Orthodox to be heretics. And i saw that the Orthodox (though they try to hide this) regard with hostility all who do not express their faith by the same external symbols and words as themselves; and this is naturally so; first, because the assertion that you are in falsehood and I am in truth, is the most cruel thing one man can say to another; and secondly, because a man loving his children and brothers cannot help being hostile to those who wish to pervert his children and brothers to a false belief. And that hostility is increased in proportion to one's greater knowledge of theology. And to me who considered that truth lay in union by love, it became self-evident that theology was itself destroying what it ought to produce. — Leo Tolstoy

And what is justice? The princess thought of that proud word 'justice'. All the complex laws of man centered for her in one clear and simple law - the law of love and self-sacrifice taught us by Him who lovingly suffered for mankind though He Himself was God. What had she to do with justice or injustice of other people? She had to endure and love, and that she did. — Leo Tolstoy

Not a lack of good, honest and noble desires and tastes, but a lack of life force, of what is known as heart, of that yearning which makes a man choose one out of all the countless paths in life presented to him and desire that one alone ... workers for the common good had not been brought to this love of the common good by heart, but had reasoned in their minds that it was good to be concerned with it and were concerned with it only because of that. — Leo Tolstoy

As soon as she had gone out, swift, swift light steps sounded on the parquet, and his bliss, his life, himself - what was best in himself, what he had so long sought and longed for - was quickly, so quickly approaching him. She did not walk but seemed, by some unseen force, to float to him. He saw nothing but her clear, truthful eyes, frightened by that same bliss of love that flooded his heart. Those eyes were shining nearer and nearer, blinding him with their light of love. She stopped close to him, touching him. Her hands rose and dropped on his shoulders.
She had done all she could - she had run up to him and given herself up entirely, shyly, blissfully. He put his arms around her and pressed his lips to her mouth that sought his kiss. — Leo Tolstoy

Here it is. Let's say you're married, you love your wife, but you're attracted by another woman.'
'Excuse me, but I absolutely cannot understand how after eating my fill here I could go past a bakery and steal a roll. — Leo Tolstoy

All books are hyggelig, but classics written by authors such as Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Leo Tolstoy, and Charles Dickens have a special place on the bookshelf. At the right age, your kids may also love to cuddle up with you in the hyggekrog and have you read to them. Probably not Tolstoy. — Meik Wiking

But when, as is most often the case, the husband and wife accept the external obligation to live together all their lives and have, by the second month, come to loathe the sight of each other, want to get divorced and yet go on living together, it usually ends in that terrible hell that drives them to drink, makes them shoot themselves, kill and poison each other — Leo Tolstoy

I'm not interested in teaching books by women ... Usually at the beginning of the semester a hand shoots up and someone asks why there aren't any women writers in the course. I say I don't love women writers enough to teach them, if you want women writers go down the hall. What I teach is guys. Serious heterosexual guys. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Real guy-guys. Henry Miller. Philip Roth. — David Gilmour

Improve your kindness by exercising your intellect, and improve your intellect by exercising your kindness and love. — Leo Tolstoy

A wound in the soul, coming from the rending of the spiritual body, strange as it may seem, gradually closes like a physical wound. And once a deep wound heals over and the edges seem to have knit, a wound in the soul, like a physical wound, can be healed only by the force of life pushing up from inside.
This was the way Natasha's wound healed. She thought her life was over. But suddenly her love for her mother showed her that the essence of life - love - was still alive in her. Love awoke, and life awoke. — Leo Tolstoy

According to the biblical tradition the absence of work
idleness
was a condition of the first man's state of blessedness before the Fall. The love of idleness has been preserved in fallen man, but now a heavy curse lies upon him, not only because we have to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow, but also because our sense of morality will not allow us to be both idle and at ease. Whenever we are idle a secret voice keeps telling us to feel guilty. If man could discover a state in which he could be idle and still feel useful and on the path of duty, he would have regained one aspect of that primitive state of blessedness. And there is one such state of enforced and irreproachable idleness enjoyed by an entire class of men
the military class. It is this state of enforced and irreproachable idleness that forms the chief attraction of military service, and it always will. — Leo Tolstoy

I know now that people only seem to live when they care only for themselves, and that it is by love for others that they really live. He who has Love has God in him, and is in God - - because God is Love. — Leo Tolstoy

The main thing, and the thing which such people as he do not understand," rejoined the lady, "is that only love consecrates marriage, and that the real marriage is that which is consecrated by love. — Leo Tolstoy

In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs and other heads of states. — Leo Tolstoy

Pfuel was one of those theoreticians who so love their theory that they lose sight of the theory's object - its practical application. His love of theory made him hate everything practical, and he would not listen to it. He was even pleased by failures, for failures resulting from deviations in practice from the theory only proved to him the accuracy of his theory. — Leo Tolstoy

The history of mankind is crowded with evidences proving that physical coercion is not adapted to moral regeneration, and that the sinful dispositions of men can be subdued only by love; that evil can be exterminated only by good; that it is not safe to rely upon the strength of an arm to preserve us from harm; that there is great security in being gentle, long-suffering, and abundant in mercy; that it is only the meek who shall inherit the earth; for those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword. — Leo Tolstoy

He knew she was there by the joy and terror that took possession of his heart [ ... ] Everything was lit up by her. She was the smile that brightened everything around. — Leo Tolstoy

The improvement of life was only accomplished to the extent to which it was based on a change of consciousness, that is, to the extent to which the law of violence was replaced in men's consciousness by the law of love. — Leo Tolstoy

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. — Leo Tolstoy

And the angel said - "I have learned that every man lives not through care of himself, but by love" ... — Leo Tolstoy

The answer has been given me by life itself, in my knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. And that knowledge I did not arrive at in any way, it was given to me as to all men, given, because I could not have got it from anywhere. Where could I have got it? By reason could I have arrived at knowing that I must love my neighbor and not oppress him? — Leo Tolstoy

He would have been considered quite a suitable match. But Levin was in love, and therefore Kitty seemed to him so perfect in every respect, so transcending everything earthly, and he seemed to himself so very earthly and insignificant a creature, that the possibility of his being considered worthy of her by others or by herself was to him unimaginable. — Leo Tolstoy

I'm most impressed by the Russian writers, so I love reading the works of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Another author who has informed the way I think is the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal. — Andrea Bocelli

The latter part of her stay in Voronezh had been the happiest period in Princess Marya's life. Her love for Rostov was not then a source of torment or agitation to her. That love had by then filled her whole soul and become an inseparable part of herself, and she no longer struggled against it. Of late Princess Marya was convinced- though she never clearly in so many words admitted it to herself- that she loved and was beloved. — Leo Tolstoy

Vronsky meanwhile, in spite of the complete fulfilment of what he had so long desired, was not completely happy. He soon felt that the realization of his longing gave him only one grain of the mountain of bliss he had anticipated. That realization showed him the eternal error men make by imagining that happiness consists in the gratification of their wishes. When first he united his life with hers and donned civilian clothes, he felt the delight of freedom in general, such as he had not before known, and also the freedom of love - he was contented then, but not for long. Soon he felt rising in his soul a desire for desires - boredom. Involuntarily he began to snatch at every passing caprice, mistaking it for a desire and a purpose. — Leo Tolstoy

Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source. — Leo Tolstoy

I have learned that men live not by selfishness, but by love. — Leo Tolstoy

Thus the truth - that his life should be directed by the spiritual element which is its basis, which manifests itself as love, and which is so natural to man - this truth, in order to force a way to man's consciousness, had to struggle not merely against the obscurity with which it was expressed and the intentional and unintentional distortions surrounding it, but also against deliberate violence, which by means of persecutions and punishments sought to compel men to accept religious laws authorized by the rulers and conflicting with the truth. — Leo Tolstoy

Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source. These thoughts seemed to him comforting. But they were only thoughts. Something was lacking in them, they were not clear, they were too one-sidedly personal and brain-spun. And there was the former agitation and obscurity. — Leo Tolstoy

have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.' And — Leo Tolstoy

I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. — Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace is many things. It is a war novel, a family saga, a love story. But at its core it is a book about people trying to find their footing in a ruptured world. It is a novel about human beings attempting to create a meaningful life for themselves in a country being torn apart by war, social change, and spiritual confusion. Russian — Leo Tolstoy

To take the simplest example: one man laughs, and another, who hears, becomes merry; or a man weeps, and another, who hears, feels sorrow. A man is excited or irritated, and another man, seeing him, comes to a similar state of mind. By his movements, or by the sounds of his voice, a man expresses courage and determination, or sadness and calmness, and this state of mind passes on to others. A man suffers, expressing his sufferings by groans and spasms, and this suffering transmits itself to other people; a man expresses his feeling of admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love to certain objects, persons, or phenomena, and others are infected by the same feelings of admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love to the same objects, persons, and phenomena. — Leo Tolstoy

By patriotism is meant, not only spontaneous, instinctive love for one's own nation, and preference for it above all other nations, but also the belief that such love and preference are good and useful. — Leo Tolstoy

Why did you give me a freedom for which I was unfit? Why did you stop teaching me? If you wished it, if you guided me differently, none of all this would happened. I should not now be punished, for no fault at all, by your indifference and even contempt, and you would not have taken from me unjustly all that I valued in life.
Let us be thankful that there is an end of the old emotions and excitements.
That day ended a romance of our marriage. Old feeling became a precious irrecoverable remembrance but a new feeling of love for my kids and their father laid the foundation of a new life and quite different happiness. That life and happiness lasted until to the present time. — Leo Tolstoy

Patriotism , as a feeling of exclusive love for one's own people, and as a doctrine of tile virtue of sacrificing one's tranquillity, one's property, and ever, one's life, in defence of one's own people from slaughter and outrage by their enemies, was the highest idea of the period when each nation considered it feasible and just, for its own advantage, to subject to slaughter and outrage the people of other nations. — Leo Tolstoy

He had heard that women often love plain ordinary men, but he did not believe it, because he judged by himself and he could only love beautiful mysterious exceptional women. — Leo Tolstoy

All men love live not by what they may intend for their own well-being, but by the love that dwells in others. — Leo Tolstoy

He felt all the torment of his and her position, all the difficulties they were surrounded by in consequence of their station in life, which exposed them to the eyes of the whole world, obliged them to hide their love, to lie and deceive, and again to lie and deceive, to scheme and constantly think about others while the passion that bound them was so strong that they both forgot everything but their love. — Leo Tolstoy

Christ's teaching, which came to be known to men, not by means of violence and the sword," they say, "but by means of non-resistance to evil, gentleness, meekness, and peaceableness, can only be diffused through the world by the example of peace, harmony, and love among its followers. — Leo Tolstoy