Leo Tolstoy Quotes

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Aesthetic theories arose one hundred fifty years ago among the wealthy classes of the Christian European world.... And notwithstanding its obvious insolidity, nobody else's theory so pleased the cultured crowd or was accepted so readily and with such absence of criticism. It so suited the people of the upper classes that to this day, notwithstanding its entirely fantastic character and the arbitrary nature of its assertions, it is repeated by the educated and uneducated as though it were something indubitable and self-evident.

Leo Tolstoy
Quite often a man goes on for years imagining that the religious teaching that had been imparted to him since childhood is still intact, while all the time there is not a trace of it left in him.

Leo Tolstoy
Those attacks upon language and religion in Poland, the Baltic provinces, Alsace, Bohemia, upon the Jews in Russia, in every place that such acts of violence occur—in what name have they been, and are they, perpetrated? In none other than the name of that patriotism which you defend.
Ask our savage Russifiers of Poland and the Baltic provinces, ask the persecutors of the Jews, why they act thus. They will tell you it is in defence of their native religion and language; they will tell you that if they do not act thus, their religion and language will suffer—the Russians will be Polonised, Teutonised, Judaised.

Leo Tolstoy
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.

Leo Tolstoy
We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is happiness. There is much, much before us.

Leo Tolstoy
The old man... used to say that a nap "after dinner was silver—before dinner, golden."

Leo Tolstoy
Once we're thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost, but it's only here that the new and the good begins.

Leo Tolstoy
Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live.

Leo Tolstoy
Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself.

Leo Tolstoy
Science may fall back on its stupid excuse that science works for science, and that when it has been developed by the scientists it will become accessible to the people also; but art, if it be art, should be accessible to all, and particularly to those for whom it is produced. And the position of our art strikingly arraigns the producers of art for not wishing, not knowing how, and being unable, to serve the people.

Leo Tolstoy
Then he thought himself unhappy, but happiness was all in the future; now he felt that the best happiness was already in the past.

Leo Tolstoy
Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.

Leo Tolstoy
Well, pray if you like, only you'd do better to use your judgment.

Leo Tolstoy
My piece of bread only belongs to me when I know that everyone else has a share, and that no one starves while I eat.

Leo Tolstoy
There are always so many conjectures as to the issue of any event that, whatever the outcome, there will always be people to say: 'I said then that it would be so'

Leo Tolstoy
History, that is to say, the unconscious, universal life of humanity, in the aggregate, every moment profits by the life of kings for itself, as an instrument for the accomplishment of its own ends.

Leo Tolstoy
And the light by which she had read the book filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and evil, flared up more brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that had been in darkness, flickered, began to grow dim, and was quenched forever.

Leo Tolstoy
Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.

Leo Tolstoy
Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and truth.

Leo Tolstoy
Further acquaintance with the labors of the Quakers and their works — with Fox, Penn, and especially the work of Dymond (published in 1827) — showed me not only that the impossibility of reconciling Christianity with force and war had been recognized long, long ago, but that this irreconcilability had been long ago proved so clearly and so indubitably that one could only wonder how this impossible reconciliation of Christian teaching with the use of force, which has been, and is still, preached in the churches, could have been maintained in spite of it.

Leo Tolstoy
As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence — as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual.

Leo Tolstoy
What is now happening to the people of the East as of the West is like what happens to every individual when he passes from childhood to adolescence and from youth to manhood. He loses what had hitherto guided his life and lives without direction, not having found a new standard suitable to his age, and so he invents all sorts of occupations, cares, distractions, and stupefactions to divert his attention from the misery and senselessness of his life. Such a condition may last a long time.

Leo Tolstoy
By patriotism is meant, not only spontaneous, instinctive love for one's own nation, and preference for it above all other nations, but also the belief that such love and preference are good and useful.

Leo Tolstoy
She did not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could not talk of outside matters.

Leo Tolstoy
The Lord had given them the day and the Lord had given them the strength. And the day and the strength had been dedicated to labor, and the labor was its reward. Who was the labor for? What would be its fruits? These were irrelevant and idle questions.

Leo Tolstoy
Why does man have reason if he can only be influenced by violence?

Leo Tolstoy
I cannot recall those years without horror, loathing, and heart-rending pain. I killed people in war, challenged men to duels with the purpose of killing them, and lost at cards; I squandered the fruits of the peasants' toil and then had them executed; I was a fornicator and a cheat. Lying, stealing, promiscuity of every kind, drunkenness, violence, murder — there was not a crime I did not commit... Thus I lived for ten years.

Leo Tolstoy
What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the world!

Leo Tolstoy
Patriotism in its simplest, clearest and most indubitable signification is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason, conscience, and a slavish enthrallment to those in power.

Leo Tolstoy
Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.

Leo Tolstoy