The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without authority, there could not be worse violence than that of authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. “To establish Anarchy.” “Anarchy will be instituted.” But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require protection from governmental power, and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power.
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. He who has love is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.
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, and the more obvious is the predestination and inevitability of his every action.
And the angel said – “I have learned that every man lives not through the care of himself, but by love”…
They ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox.
Smiling with pleasure, they went through their memories, not sad, old people’s memories, but poetic, youthful ones, those impressions from the very distant past where dream merged with reality, and they laughed softly, rejoicing at something.
Religions are the exponents of the highest comprehension of life… within a given age in a given society… a basis for evaluating human sentiments. If feelings bring people nearer to the religion’s ideal… they are good; if these estrange them from it, and oppose it, they are bad.
The happiness of men consists in life. And life is in labor.
You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is irrefutable proof of freedom.
Art should cause violence to be set aside and it is the only art that can accomplish this.
Konstantin Levin did not like talking and hearing about the beauty of nature. Words for him took away the beauty of what he saw.
Nothing prevents our from denying life by suicide. Well then, kill yourself, and you won’t discuss. If life displeases you, kill yourself! You live, and cannot understand the meaning of life – then finish it, and do not fool about in life, saying and writing that you do not understand it. You have come into a good company where people are contented and know what they are doing; if you find it dull and repulsive – go away!
I looked more widely around me, I studied the lives of the masses of humanity, and I saw that not two or three, or ten, but hundreds, thousands, millions, had so understood the meaning of life that they were able both to live and to die. All these people were well acquainted with the meaning of life and death, quietly labored, endured privation and suffering, lived and died, and saw in all this, not a vain, but a good thing.
I can’t think of you and myself apart. You and I are the same to me
But my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.
The question of how things will settle down is the only important question.
She [Anna] was doing what she always did when she saw him [Vronsky]—comparing the image of him in her imagination (incomparably superior, and impossible in reality) with him as he was.
One is ashamed to say how little is needed for all men to be delivered from those calamities which now oppress them; it is only needful not to lie.
Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget…
Armies are necessary, before all things, for the defense of governments from their own oppressed and enslaved subjects.
In the best, the friendliest, and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning.
The simplest and shortest ethical precept is to be served as little as possible… and to serve others as much as possible.
There lay between them, separating them, that same terrible line of the unknown and of fear, like the line separating the living from the dead.
I have to create a circle of reading for myself: Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal, and The New Testament. This is also necessary for all people.
What is now happening to the people of the East as of the West is like what happens to every individual when he passes from childhood to adolescence and from youth to manhood. He loses what had hitherto guided his life and lives without direction, not having found a new standard suitable to his age, and so he invents all sorts of occupations, cares, distractions, and stupefactions to divert his attention from the misery and senselessness of his life. Such a condition may last a long time.
The highest wisdom has but one science-the science of the whole-the science explaining the whole creation and man’s place in it.
One free man will say with truth what he thinks and feels amongst thousands of men who by their acts and words attest exactly the opposite. It would seem that he who sincerely expressed his thought must remain alone, whereas it generally happens that everyone else, or the majority at least, have been thinking and feeling the same things but without expressing them.
And leaving the most powerful of weapons — thought and its expression — which move the world, each man employs the weapon of social activity, not noticing that every social activity is based on the very foundations against which he is bound to fight.
Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
God cannot be understood by logical reasoning but only by submission.
Whereas at present, every man, even, if free, asks himself, “What can I do alone against all this ocean of evil and deceit which overwhelms us? Why should I express my opinion? Why indeed possess one?”
I asked: ‘What are the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause, and space?’ And I replied to quite another question: ‘What are the meaning of my life within time, cause, and space?’ With the result that, after long efforts of thought, the answer I reached was: ‘None’.
The most important person is the one you are within this moment.
Life is everything. Life is God. Everything shifts and moves and this movement is God. And while there is life, there is a delight in the self-awareness of the divinity. To love life is to love God. The hardest and most blissful thing is to love this life in one’s suffering, in the guiltlessness of suffering.
I often think about how unfairly life’s good fortune is sometimes distributed.
The struggle with evil by means of violence is the same as an attempt to stop a cloud, in order that there may be no rain.
By loving people without cause he discovered indubitable causes for loving them.
But that’s just the aim of civilization – to make everything a source of enjoyment.
The French army melted away at the uniform rate of a mathematical progression…
There are many faiths, but the spirit is one, in me, in you, and in every man.