Leo Tolstoy

“ How can I have faith in this Church and believe, if to a man who asks from the bottom of his soul it replies only by the most miserable deceptions, by insanities, and affirms that no one has the right to make any other reply to these questions? ”

“ I may choose the color of my trousers, I may take a wife according to my taste, but in other respects, in those in which I feel myself a man, I must ask these imbecile people, these fools and deceivers. ”

“ As a guide of my life in the innermost corner of my soul, I am to have the pastor, the priest of my parish, who has just come from the seminary, a shallow boy, almost illiterate, or an aged drunkard, whose only care is to acquire as many fowls and pigs as he can. ”