Leo Tolstoy Quotes

If patriotism is good, then Christianity, which gives peace, is an idle dream, and the sooner this teaching is eradicated, the better. But if Christianity really gives peace, and if we really want peace, then patriotism is a leftover from barbarous times, which must not only not be evoked and taught, as we now do, but which must be eradicated by all means of preaching, persuasion, contempt, and ridicule. If Christianity is the truth, and if we wish to live in peace, then we must not only have no sympathy for the power of our country, but must even rejoice in its weakening and contribute to it.

Just when the question of how to live had become clearer to him, a new insoluble problem presented itself - Death.

How can one be well...when one suffers morally?

Am I mad, to see what others do not see, or are they mad who are responsible for all that I am seeing?

All were happy - plants, birds, insects and children. But grown-up people - adult men and women - never left off cheating and tormenting themselves and one another. It was not this spring morning which they considered sacred and important, not the beauty of God's world, given to all creatures to enjoy - a beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony and to love.

Knowledge is real knowledge only when it is acquired by the efforts of your intellect, not by memory

Well, so it isn't time yet to die, is it?

vegetarianism is the taproot of humanitarianism.

Muhammad has always been standing higher than the Christianity. He does not consider god as a human being and never makes himself equal to God. Muslims worship nothing except God and Muhammad is his Messenger. There is no any mystery and secret in it.

I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.

Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it." - Vronksy {Anna Karenina}

Today, nobody sees, or wishes to see, that in our time the enslavement of the majority of men is based on money taxes, levied on land and otherwise, which are collected by government from the subjects.

Energy rests upon love; and come as it will, there's no forcing it.

He looked at her as a man might look at a faded flower he had plucked, in which it was difficult for him to trace the beauty that had made him pick and so destroy it

He knew she was there by the joy and terror that took possession of his heart [...] Everything was lit up by her. She was the smile that brightened everything around.

Whenever my life came to a halt, the questions would arise: Why? And what next?

One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one's own flesh in the inkpot, each time one dips one's pen.

... in marriage the great thing was love, and that with love one would always be happy, for happiness rests only on oneself.

The subject of history is the life of peoples and mankind.

Love alone is the only reasonable activity or pursuit of humankind....Fo r Love not only annihilates our fear of meaninglessness but empowers us to seek the happiness of others. And this indeed is our greatest happiness.

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.

You can't imagine what a pleasure this complete laziness is to me: not a thought in my brain- you might send a ball rolling through it!

Love is the only way to rescue humanity from all ills.

Don't seek God in temples. He is close to you. He is within you. Only you should surrender to Him and you will rise above happiness and unhappiness.

I have discovered nothing. I have only found out what I knew. I understand the force that in the past gave me life, and now too gives me life. I have been set free from falsity, I have found the Master.

Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of people--that's in your hands.

If a man does not work at necessary and good things, then he will work at unnecessary and stupid things

He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. "Where is it? What death?" There was no fear because there was no death. In place of death there was light.

As soon as man applies his intelligence to any object at all, he unfailingly destroys the object.

I now understand that my welfare is only possible if I acknowledge my unity with all the people of the world without exception.

The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God.

And yet, now that years have passed, I recall it and wonder that it could distress me so much. It will be the same thing, too, with this trouble. Time will go by and I shall not mind about this either.

Talent is the capacity to direct concentrated attention upon the subject: "the gift of seeing what others have not seen.

Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait. There is nothing stronger than those two: patience and time, they will do it all.

He felt that he was himself and did not wish to be anyone else. He only wished now to be better than he had been formerly

It is very difficult to tell the truth.

You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom.

Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man's emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.

It is a rude feeling, because it is natural only to people standing on the lowest level of morality, and expecting from other nations such outrages as they themselves are ready to inflict.

When one's head is gone one doesn't weep for one's hair!

The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of another's labor by force. It is immaterial whether this force be founded upon ownership of the slave or ownership of the money that he must get to live.

I ask one thing: I ask the right to hope and suffer as I do now." Vronsky

The artist's mission must not be to produce an irrefutable solution to a problem, but to compel us to love life in all its countless and inexhaustible manifestations.

Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man in music, and in that is its power and significance.

When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.

We lost because we told ourselves we lost.

If a man's aspirations towards a righteous life are serious.. .if he earnestly and sincerely seeks a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from animal food, because, not to mention the excitement of the passions produced by such food, it is plainly immoral, as it requires an act contrary to moral feeling, i. e., killing - and is called forth only by greed.

When Levin thought what he was and what he was living for, he could find no answer to the questions and was reduced to despair; but when he left off questioning himself about it, it seemed as though he knew both what he was and what he was living for, acting and living resolutely and without hesitation.