Leo Tolstoy Quotes

509 Sourced Quotes

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.

Leo Tolstoy
True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion.

Leo Tolstoy
The best method for a given teacher is the one which is most familiar to the teacher.

Leo Tolstoy
Death destroys the body, as the scaffolding is destroyed after the building is up and finished. And he whose building is up rejoices at the destruction of the scaffolding and of the body.

Leo Tolstoy
There was no answer, except the general answer life gives to all the most complex and insoluble questions. That answer is: one must live for the needs of the day, in other words, become oblivious. To become oblivious in dreams was impossible now, at least till night-time; it was impossible to return to that music sung by carafe-women; and so one had to become oblivious in the dreams of life.

Leo Tolstoy
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.

Leo Tolstoy
Wealth brings a heavy purse; poverty, a light spirit.

Leo Tolstoy
In historical events great men—so called—are but the labels that serve to give a name to an event, and like labels, they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.

Leo Tolstoy
Three days afterwards the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrey went to the steps of the tomb to take his last farewell of her. Even in the coffin the face was the same, though the eyes were closed. "Ah, what have you done to me?" it still seemed to say.

Leo Tolstoy
He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.

Leo Tolstoy
I know that most men — not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic, problems — can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty — conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives.

Leo Tolstoy
When a person is haughty, he distances himself from other people and thereby deprives himself of one of life's biggest pleasures—open, joyful communication with everyone.

Leo Tolstoy
A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand men, not athletes but rather weak and ordinary people, have subdued two hundred million vigorous, clever, capable, and freedom-loving people? Do not the figures make it clear that it is not the English who have enslaved the Indians, but the Indians who have enslaved themselves?

Leo Tolstoy
History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put into words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a single nation, appears impossible.

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

Leo Tolstoy
In historical events great men — so-called — are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.

Leo Tolstoy
The relation of word to thought, and the creation of new concepts is a complex, delicate and enigmatic process unfolding in our soul.

Leo Tolstoy
The most important person is the one you are with in this moment.

Leo Tolstoy
The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people.

Leo Tolstoy
My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and am in doubt most of the time.

Leo Tolstoy
The role of the disappointed lover of a maiden or of any single woman might be ridiculous; but the role of a man who was pursuing a married woman, and who made it the purpose of his life at all cost to draw her into adultery, was one which had in it something beautiful and dignified and could never be ridiculous.

Leo Tolstoy
Woman is generally so bad that the difference between a good and a bad woman scarcely exists.

Leo Tolstoy
In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs and other heads of states.

Leo Tolstoy
Nothing prevents our denying life by suicide. well then, kill yourself, and you won't discuss. If life displeases you, kill yourself! You live, and cannot understand the meaning of life - then finish it, and do not fool about in life, saying and writing that you do not understand it. You have come into good company where people are contented and know what they are doing; if you find it dull and repulsive - go away!

Leo Tolstoy
Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective, of nature with reason, of the unconscious with the conscious, and therefore art is the highest means of knowledge.

Leo Tolstoy
A Christian cannot help being free, because in the pursuit and attainment of his object, no one can either hinder or retard him.

Leo Tolstoy
Absolute continuity of motion is not comprehensible to the human mind. Laws of motion of any kind become comprehensible to man only when he examines arbitrarily selected elements of that motion; but at the same time, a large proportion of human error comes from the arbitrary division of continuous motion into discontinuous elements.

Leo Tolstoy
True art and true science possess two unmistakable marks: the first, an inward mark, which is this, that the servitor of art and science will fulfil his vocation, not for profit but with self- sacrifice; and the second, an external sign, his productions will be intelligible to all the people whose welfare he has in view.

Leo Tolstoy
Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history.

Leo Tolstoy
If I had any doubts at all about the justice of my dislike for Shakespeare, that doubt vanished completely. What a crude, immoral,vulgar, and senseless work Hamlet is. The whole thing is based on pagan vengeance; the only aim is to gather together as many effects as possible; there is no rhyme or reason about it.

Leo Tolstoy