Leo Tolstoy Quotes

509 Sourced Quotes

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.

Leo Tolstoy
The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.

Leo Tolstoy
For us, with the rule of right and wrong given us by Christ, there is nothing for which we have no standard. And there is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.

Leo Tolstoy
Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.

Leo Tolstoy
He never chooses an opinion, he just wears whatever happens to be in style.

Leo Tolstoy
To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.

Leo Tolstoy
All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Leo Tolstoy
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

Leo Tolstoy
The error arises from the learned jurists deceiving themselves and others, by asserting that government is not what it really is, one set of men banded together to oppress another set of men, but, as shown by science, is the representation of the citizens in their collective capacity.

Leo Tolstoy
Giving alms is only a virtuous deed when you give money that you yourself worked to get.

Leo Tolstoy
Martin's soul grew very very glad. He crossed himself put on his spectacles, and began reading the Gospel just where it had opened; and at the top of the page he read: I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in. And at the bottom of the page he read: Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren even these least, ye did it unto me (Matt. xxv). And Martin understood that his dream had come true; and that the Saviour had really come to him that day, and he had welcomed him.

Leo Tolstoy
Where is there any book of the law so clear to each man as that written in his heart?

Leo Tolstoy
If a poor person envies a rich person, he is no better than the rich person.

Leo Tolstoy
Konstantin Levin did not like talking and hearing about the beauty of nature. Words for him took away the beauty of what he saw.

Leo Tolstoy
Are we not all flung into the world for no other purpose than to hate each other, and so to torture ourselves and one another?

Leo Tolstoy
For if we allow that human life is always guided by reason, we destroy the premise that life is possible at all.

Leo Tolstoy
Ivan Ilych saw that he was dying, and he was in continual despair. In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it. The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter's Logic: "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal," had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius — man in the abstract — was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others.

Leo Tolstoy
Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.

Leo Tolstoy
It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty.

Leo Tolstoy
If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.

Leo Tolstoy
The true meaning of Christ's teaching consists in the recognition of love as the supreme law of life, and therefore not admitting any exceptions.

Leo Tolstoy
People understand the meaning of eating lies in the nourishment of the body only when they cease to consider that the object of that activity is pleasure.... People understand the meaning of art only when they cease to consider that the aim of that activity is beauty, i. e., pleasure.

Leo Tolstoy
He had heard that women often love plain ordinary men, but he did not believe it, because he judged by himself and he could only love beautiful mysterious exceptional women.

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

Leo Tolstoy
Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and all the agonies of the soul, but for all time his most tormenting tragedy has been, is, and will be—the tragedy of the bedroom.

Leo Tolstoy
At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding it; the other even more reasonable says that it is too painful and harassing to think of the danger, since it is not a man's power to provide for everything and escape from the general march of events; and that it is therefore better to turn aside from the painful subject till it has come, and to think of what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally yields to the first voice; in society to the second.

Leo Tolstoy
Some mathematician, I believe, has said that true pleasure lies not in the discovery of truth, but in the search for it.

Leo Tolstoy
But that what was for him the greatest and most cruel injustice appeared to others a quite ordinary occurrence.

Leo Tolstoy
William Lloyd Garrison took part in a discussion on the means of suppressing war in the Society for the Establishment of Peace among Men, which existed in 1838 in America. He came to the conclusion that the establishment of universal peace can only be founded on the open profession of the doctrine of non-resistance to evil by violence (Matt. v. 39), in its full significance, as understood by the Quakers, with whom Garrison happened to be on friendly relations. Having come to this conclusion, Garrison thereupon composed and laid before the society a declaration, which was signed at the time — in 1838 — by many members.

Leo Tolstoy
I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.

Leo Tolstoy