It’s all God’s will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle
God is the same everywhere.
“ ‘A limit has been set to human life, which cannot be overstepped.’ “
“ ‘Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible.’ “
Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women
“ ‘Try to weep. Nothing relieves one like tears.’ “
“ ‘I’ll flatten you like a pancake — turn back!’ “
“He used to say that there were only two sources of human vice: idleness and superstition; and that there were only two virtues: activity and intelligence.”
There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.
“He went on in the same way, in French, pronouncing in Russian only those words he wanted to underscore contemptuously.”
You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.
Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself.
If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.
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.
“How can one be well...when one suffers morally?”
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.
Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid.
“They say: sufferings are misfortunes," said Pierre. 'But if at once this minute, I was asked, would I remain what I was before I was taken prisoner, or go through it all again, I should say, for God's sake let me rather be a prisoner and eat horseflesh again. We imagine that as soon as we are torn out of our habitual path all is over, but it is only the beginning of something new and good. As long as there is life, there is happiness. There is a great deal, a great deal before us.”
“Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the achievement of historical, universally human goals.”
Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy.
Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it.
“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.”
We are asleep until we fall in love!
“Kings are the slaves of history.”
The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness.
Yes, love, but not the love that loves for something, to gain something, or because of something, but that love that I felt for the first time, when dying, I saw my enemy and yet loved him.
If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself.
If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.
Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.
I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.
Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid.
Some one dear to one can be loved with human love; but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.
“Life did not stop, and one had to live.”
“Everything depends on upbringing. ”
I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.
“Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.”
“Here I am alive, and it's not my fault, so I have to try and get by as best I can without hurting anybody until death takes over.”
“In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning. ”
Everything I know, I know because of love.
“everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait . . . there is nothing stronger than these two: patience and time, they will do it all.”
We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.
“There will be today, there will be tomorrow, there will be always, and there was yesterday, and there was the day before...”
“We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them.”
I knew that feeling of love which is the essence of the soul, for which no object is needed.
“Life is everything. Life is God. Everything shifts and moves, and this movement is God. And while there is life, there is 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.”
“Life is too long to say anything definitely; always say perhaps.”
The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience
“A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it.”
A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, ‘Today I’m going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.’
“the same question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?"
“He did what heroes do after their work is accomplished; he died.”