Leo Tolstoy Quotes

I marveled at them both; how difficult it must be to be a person. To constantly subvert your desires. To worry about doing the right thing, rather than doing what is most expedient. At that moment, honestly, I had grave doubts as to my ability to interact on such a level. I wondered if I could ever become the human I hoped to be.

Most of us actually stifle enough good impulses during the course of a day to change the current of our lives.

'Performance' gave me doubts about my way of life. Before that, I had been completely involved in the more bawdy side of the film business. But after that, everything changed.

A man's conflicts represent what he 'really' is.

When I was younger, I wondered if it was possible to be a good person and a writer.

Everybody is grappling with their own moral compass, and that needle, like any needle, can't just stick. It's always floating a little bit, and depending on where you're standing, it's hard to read.

For me the moral dilemma this past year has been how to make peace with the unacceptable.

In suffocating the voice of conscience, passion carries with itself a restlessness of the body and the senses: it is the restlessness of the "external man." When the internal man has been reduced to silence, then passion, once it has been given freedom of action, so to speak, exhibits itself as an insistent tendency to satisfy the senses and the body.

I've gone through a lot of different phases on what I do and why I do it - morally and ethically. I've tortured myself about it, especially in dealing with success and money.

The battle between good and evil is endlessly fascinating because we are participants every day.

My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life.

Everyone spends their lives trying to balance their world between good and evil.

I'd prefer to be good, but I'm not always. I struggle.

The real question is: How do you react? What do you do next? Evade responsibilities? Bury yourself in work? What do you do? All three of my novels take up that question, although none gives an answer.

I think my heart is quite selfish. If I followed my heart, I would not be a good person. But I have moral principles. I have to sit down and reflect.

I became conflicted in my late teens.

When we talk about self-confrontations, we are speaking about moral issues rather than social issues.

Good and bad - this is the story of my life.

Monsters will always exist. There's one inside each of us. But an angel lives there, too. There is no more important agenda than figuring out how to slay one and nurture the other.

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.

Every action we take, everything we do, is either a victory or defeat in the struggle to become what we want to be.

I do listen to myself sometimes and think, 'Is my moral compass so easily swayed by the characters I play, or is it me growing as a human being?'

It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

I believe you have to nurture your conscience.

As an actor, to play someone who's at war with himself, that's so interesting.