8 Leo Tolstoy Quotes on Death

Leo Tolstoy quotes on death

5. Ivan Ilych saw that he was dying, and he was in continual despair. In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it. The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter's Logic: 'Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal,' had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius - man in the abstract - was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others.

8. Six feet of land was all that he needed.

17. 'What's this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way under me,' he thought, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle of the French soldiers with the artilleryman was ending, and eager to know whether the red-haired gunner artilleryman was killed or not, whether the cannons had been taken or saved. But he saw nothing of all that. Above him there was nothing but the sky - the lofty sky, not clear, but still immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds creeping quietly over it.

18. Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrew went up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the farewell kiss. And there in the coffin was the same face, though with closed eyes. 'Ah, what have you done to me?' it still seemed to say, and Prince Andrew felt that something gave way in his soul and that he was guilty of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget.

20. You will die - and it will all be over. You will die and find out everything - or cease asking.

28. Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.

42. The man is making preparations for a year, and does not know that he will die before evening. And I remembered God's second saying, 'Learn what is not given to man.' 'What dwells in man' I already knew. Now I learnt what is not given him. It is not given to man to know his own needs.

136. Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.