Leo Tolstoy Quotes

I'd rather believe in my own choice and see it all go wrong than do something I'm not fully convinced of and later feel guilty about it.

I don't know if I'm so righteous.

We can only write well about our sins because it is too difficult to recall a virtuous act or even whether it was the result of good or evil motives.

It's hard to regret making the choice that you think is right.

I have done so many things in my life," she said to the mirror. "Evil things, perhaps. But never unattentively, never wastefully...was I wrong?

To be ashamed of one's immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one's morality.

I too have my own demons, and I have struggled. I've made my own mistakes, and I'm not proud of them.

For an author, the nice characters aren't much fun. What you want are the screwed up characters. You know, the characters that are constantly wondering if what they are doing is the right thing, characters that are not only screwed up but are self-tapping screws. They're doing it for themselves.

You cannot do wrong and feel right. It is impossible!

I know I've done good things, I know I've done bad things.

One lives with so many bad deeds on one's conscience and some good intentions in one's heart.

There was a time when I thought I was doing a good thing with good guys for a good cause. Looking back, I think I really wanted to be a warrior.

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

O conscience, upright and stainless, how bitter a sting to thee is a little fault!

Everybody is probably guilty of something. I'm sure that if anyone looked into my heart long enough, they could say, you know, 'Bill had some unkind thoughts back in second grade.'

We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.

I had now been in the United States of America something like five years, working here and there as the inclination seized me, which, I must confess, was not often. I was certainly getting some enjoyment out of life, but now and then the waste of time appalled me, for I still have a conviction that I was born to a different life.

We see the worst versions of ourselves - things we did or could have done - in the characters who inspire us.

I don't make the right choices. I simply don't.

I act the way I act and I'm not proud of it.

I agree with myself on 80 percent of things, but when I look at myself in the mirror in the morning, I still have inner debates about the right thing to do.

There are many things about my life that I wish had been different and that I still find difficult to live down.

I think the saddest thing in the world will be for people who face their death and realize they never lived. That won't be me.

Remember the man who truly repents is never satisfied with his own repentance.

There are periods where you think, "What am I doing?" or "What am I doing it for?"; that's a more scary question. "I've made s---loads of money, I've left my mark in music, why am I still doing this?," and it takes a while to answer that question.