All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.
Leo TolstoyBut the older he grew and the more intimately he came to know his brother, the oftener the thought occurred to him that the power of working for the general welfare โ a power of which he felt himself entirely destitute โ was not a virtue but rather a lack of something: not a lack of kindly honesty and noble desires and tastes, but a lack of the power of living, of what is called heart โ the aspiration which makes a man choose one out of all the innumerable paths of life that present themselves, and desire that alone.
Leo TolstoySome mathematician, I believe, has said that true pleasure lies not in the discovery of truth, but in the search for it.
Leo TolstoyThese prinยญciples laid down as in variable rules: that one must pay a card sharper, but need not pay a tailor; that one must never tell a lie to a man, but one may to a woman; that one must never cheat any one, but one may a husband; that one must never pardon an insult, but one may give one and so on. These principles were possibly not reasonable and not good, but they were of unfailing certainty, and so long as he adhered to them, Vronsky felt that his heart was at peace and he could hold his head up.
Leo Tolstoy