Our body is a living-machine. It is organized for that purpose, that is its nature; let the life in it be left to itself; let it defend itself; it will do more than
if you paralyze it by loading it down with remedies. Our body is like a perfect watch which is meant to go a certain time; the watchmaker cannot open it; he can only regulate it by his sense of feeling and with his eyes shut. Our body is a living-machine, that is all it is.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Credit for success in battle depends not on them but on that man in the ranks who cries, “They have fled !” or who shouts “Hurrah !” And only in these ranks can you serve with any assurance that you are of service.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
A good leader on the field of battle needs not genius or any of the special qualities so much as he needs the exact opposite, or the lack of the highest human qualities- love, poetry, affection, a philosophical, investigating skepticism. He must be narrowminded, firmly convinced that what he is doing is absolutely essential (otherwise he will not have patience), and then only will he be a brave leader. God pity him if he is a man who has any love for any one, or any pity, or has any scruples about right or wrong.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The French man is self-confident because he considers himself individually, both as regards mind and body, irresistibly captivating to either men or women. The Englishman is self-confident through his absolute conviction that he is a citizen of the most fortunately constituted kingdom in the world, and because, as an Englishman, he knows always and in all circumstances what it is requisite for him to do, and also knows that all that he does as an Englishman is correct beyond cavil. The Italian is self-confident because he is excitable, and easily forgets himself and others. The Russian is self-confident for the precise reason that he knows nothing, and wishes to know nothing, because he believes that it is impossible to know anything. But the German is self-confident in a worse way than all the rest above and beyond all the rest, because he imagines that he knows the truth, – the science which he has himself invented, but which for him is absolute truth !
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Forgiveness is a woman`s virtue. But a man has no right and no power to forgive and forget.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Sorrow is sent by Him, and comes not from men.Men are His instruments; they are not accountable. If it seem to you that any one is culpable toward you, forget it and forgive.We have no right to punish.And you will find happiness in forgiving.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
There is a familiar state of mind which comes over a man after a dinner, and, acting with greater force than all the dictates of mere reason, compels him to be satisfied with himself and to consider all men his friends.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
When an apple is ripe and falls, what makes it fall ? Is it the attraction of gravitation ? or is it because its stem withers ? or because the sun dries it up ? or because it is heavy ? or because the wind shakes it ? or because the small boy standing underneath is hungry for it ? There is no such proximate cause.The whole thing is the result of all those conditions, in accordance with which every vital, organic, complex event occurs.And the botanist who argues that the apple fell from the effect of decomposing vegetable tissue, or the like, is just as much in the right as the boy who, standing below, declares that the apple fell because he wanted to eat it, and prayed for it.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
History, that is to say, the unconscious, universal life of humanity, in the aggregate, every moment profits by the life of kings for itself, as an instrument for the accomplishment of its own ends.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The king is the slave of history.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Man consciously lives for himself; but, at the same time, he serves as an unconscious instrument for the accomplishment of historical and social ends. An action once accomplished is fixed; and when a man`s activity coincides with others, with the millions of actions of other men, it acquires historical significance. The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more men he is connected with, the greater the influence he exerts over others, the more evident is the predestined and unavoidable necessity of his every action.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Every man has a twofold life: on one side is his personal life, which is free in proportion as its interests are abstract; the other is life as an element, as one bee in the swarm; and here a man has no chance of disregarding the laws imposed on him.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Every man lives for himself, and enjoys sufficient freedom for the attainment of his own personal ends, and is conscious in his whole being that he can instantly perform or refuse to perform any action; but as soon as he has done it, this action, accomplished in a definite period of time, becomes irrevocable and forms an element in history, in which it takes its place with a fully preordained and no longer capricious significance.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
To criticize a man in disfavor is very easy, and so it is to make him responsible for the blunders of others.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Egyptians used to believe that our souls once inhabited the bodies of animals, and will go into animals again.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
When you go back, remembering, and remembering, and remembering everything, you remember so far back, that at last you remember what happened even before you were born.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The biblical tradition tells us that absence of work, idleness, constituted the first man`s happiness before the fall. A love for idleness remains just the same, even in fallen man; but the curse still hangs over mankind, and it is impossible for us to be slothful and easy-going; not alone because we are required to earn our bread in the sweat of our faces, but because by the very conditions of our moral nature we cannot be idle and content. A secret voice warns us that to be idle is for us a sin. If a man could find a situation where he could feel that he was of use in the world, and fulfilling his duty while still remaining idle, he would have found one of the conditions of primeval bliss. And such a condition of obligatory and irreproachable idleness is enjoyed by a whole class of society – the military. And this state of obligatory and irreproachable idleness always has been and will be the chief attraction of military service.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
To forsake family and fatherland, and forswear all endeavor to get earthly good; to form no ties, and to wander under an assumed name, in hempen rags, from place to place, doing no harm to any one, and praying for people, praying for those who persecute them, as well as for those who give them protection, – there is no truth, and no life, higher than that.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Why, for what purpose, should beings who are good and noble, and best made to find happiness in life, who have not only never injured a living thing, but rather have sought only the happiness of others,- why should they be recalled to God; while the base and the vicious, or those who are only a burden to themselves and others, are left to live ?
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
