two voices (Tolstoy)

At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding it; the other even more reasonable says that it is too painful and harassing to think of the danger, since it is not a man’s power to provide for everything and escape from the general march of events; and that it is therefore better to turn aside from the painful subject till it has come, and to think of what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally yields to the first voice; in society to the second.


Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

changing the world

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. 


Leo Tolstoy

Truth

If we would only testify of the truth as we see it, it would turn out at once that there are hundreds, thousands, and even millions of men just as we are, who see the truth as we do, are afraid as we are of seeming to be singular by confessing it, and are only waiting, again as we are, for someone to proclaim it.

-Leo Tolstoy

Truth

If we would only testify of the truth as we see it, it would turn out at once that there are hundreds, thousands, and even millions of men just as we are, who see the truth as we do, are afraid as we are of seeming to be singular by confessing it, and are only waiting, again as we are, for someone to proclaim it.

-Leo Tolstoy

 

Men are like rivers

“It is one of the most common and generally accepted superstitions to attribute some particular leading quality to every man–to say of him that he is kind, wicked, foolish, energetic, or dull. This is wrong. We may say of a man that he is more frequently kind than cruel, wise than foolish, energetic than apathetic, or vice versa–but it could never be true to say of a man that he is kind or wise, and of another that he is wicked or foolish. Yet this is our method of classifying mankind and a very false method it is. Men are like rivers. The water is alike in all of them; but every river is narrow in some places and wide in others; here swift and there sluggish, here clear and there turbid; cold in winter and warm in summer. The same may be said of men. Every man bears within himself the germs of every human quality, displaying all in turn; and a man can often seem unlike himself–yet he still remains the same man.”

Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection, p. 190