Author of quotes: Leo Tolstoy. Page 1

The entire revolutionary activity of Novodvorov, despite the fact that he was able to eloquently explain it with very convincing arguments, seemed to Nekhlyudov to be based only on vanity, the desire to excel over people.

Samonson was one of those people, predominantly male, whose actions flow from the activity of thought and are determined by it. Novodvorov, on the other hand, belonged to the category of people of a predominantly female type, whose activity of thought is aimed partly at achieving goals set by feeling, and partly at justifying actions caused by feeling.

The masses always adore only power. The government rules - they adore it and hate us, tomorrow we will be in power - they will adore us...

He never thought about the future life, in the depths of his soul he carried that firm, calm conviction inherited from his ancestors, common to all farmers, that just as in the world of animals and plants nothing ends, but is constantly being remade from one form to another - manure into grain, a grain into a chicken, a tadpole into a frog, a worm into a butterfly, an acorn into an oak tree, and so a person is not destroyed, but only modified. He believed in this and therefore cheerfully and even cheerfully always looked into the eyes of death.

He did not care at all about how the world began, according to Moses or Darwin, and Darwinism, which seemed so important to his comrades, was for him the same toy of thought as creation in six days.

He never repented of anything and did not think far ahead, but acted in the present with all the strength of his intelligence, dexterity, and practicality.

From the very beginning of the revolutionary movement in Russia, Nekhlyudov had an unfriendly and contemptuous feeling towards the revolutionaries. What repulsed him, first of all, was the cruelty and secrecy of the methods they used in the fight against the government, most importantly, the cruelty of the murders that they committed, and then he was disgusted by the trait of great self-importance common to all of them. But having gotten to know them better and all that they had often innocently suffered from the government, he saw that they could not be other than what they were.

Deciding while still a schoolboy that what his father, a former commissariat official, had acquired was acquired dishonestly, he announced to his father that this fortune should be given to the people. When his father not only did not listen, but scolded him, he left home and stopped using his father’s funds. Deciding that all existing evil comes from the lack of education of the people, he, leaving the university, became friends with the populists, entered the village as a teacher and boldly preached to both students and peasants everything that he considered fair, and denied everything that he considered false. He was arrested and tried.

These women were also brought together by the disgust that both felt for sexual love. One hated this love because she had experienced all its horror; the other because, having not experienced it, she looked at it as something incomprehensible and at the same time disgusting and offensive to human dignity.

This trait - the complete absence of coquetry - was especially surprising and therefore seduced Maslova. Maslova saw that Marya Pavlovna knew and even that she was pleased to know that she was beautiful, but that she not only did not rejoice at the impression that her appearance made on men, but was afraid of it.

The transfer to the political department improved Maslova’s situation in all respects. Not to mention the fact that the political ones were better accommodated, fed better, and were subjected to less rudeness, Maslova’s transfer improved her situation in that this persecution of men stopped, and she could live without being reminded every minute of the past that she I wanted to forget now.

The court aims only to preserve society in its present situation and for this purpose it persecutes and executes those who are above the general level and want to raise it, the so-called political criminals, and those who are below it, the so-called criminal types.

The court, in my opinion, is only an administrative tool for maintaining the existing order of things, beneficial to our class.

I believe that all of us, placed in a certain position, must bear the responsibilities that follow from this position, must maintain the living conditions in which we were born and inherited from our ancestors, and which we must pass on to our descendants.