13 Quotes by Leo Tolstoy about Childhood


  • Author Leo Tolstoy
  • Quote

    Sitting in his old schoolroom on the sofa with little cushions on the arms and looking into Natasha's wildly eager eyes, Rostov was carried back into that world of home and childhood which had no meaning for anyone else, but gave him some of the greatest pleasure in his life.

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  • Author Leo Tolstoy
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    All the enthusiasms of childhood and youth passed without leaving much mark on him; he succumbed to sensuality, and to vanity, and, towards the end of his schooldays, to the idea of liberalism, but always within limits which his instinct unfailingly indicated to him.

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  • Author Leo Tolstoy
  • Quote

    For the first time I envisaged the idea that we - that is, our family - were not the only people in the world, that not every conceivable interest was centered in ourselves but that there existed another life - that of people who had nothing in common with us, cared nothing for us, had no idea of our existence even. I must have known all this before but I had not known it as I did now - I had not realized it; I had not felt it.

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  • Author Leo Tolstoy
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    I endeavor to recall the happy comforting dreams interrupted by my returning to consciousness of reality, but to my astonishment so soon as I recapture the thread of my former reverie I find it impossible to go on with it and, most astonishing of all, my imaginings no longer afford me any pleasure.

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  • Author Leo Tolstoy
  • Quote

    Will the freshness, lightheartedness, the need for love, and strength of faith which you have in childhood ever return? What better time than when the two best virtues -- innocent joy and the boundless desire for love -- were the only motives in life?

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