Amy > Amy's Quotes

“One need only admit the premise that public peace of mind is in danger and any action finds justification. All the horrors of the Reign of Terror in France were based entirely on solicitude for public tranquillity.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“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.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“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.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“To get rid of an enemy one must love him. ”
― Leo Tolstoy

“I felt her loss in a powerfully physical way. I missed her smell and the sticky wet of her breath on my neck. I missed her fingers scratching through my hair. We sat next to each other, lay across each other, pushed, pulled, stroked, and struck each other a hundred times a day and I suffered the deprivation of this. It was an ache, a hunger on the surface of my skin.”
― Karen Joy Fowler

“Our culture is an edifice built of externalized memories.”
― Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

“After hearing an answer, I drew in the chloroform in long breaths, thinking to assist the doctors in their work. In spite of this, I have a faint recollection of struggling with all my might against its effects, previous to losing consciousness; but I was greatly surprised on being afterwards told that I had, when in that condition, used more foul language in ten minutes delirium than had probably been used in twenty four hours by the whole population of Canada.”
― W.H. Davies, The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp

“Cats – by day the most docile of God’s creatures, every one of them in the night enlisting under the devil’s banner – took the place by storm after the human voice had ceased.”
― W.H. Davies, The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp

“Home's where you go when you run out of homes.”
― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy