Leo Tolstoy Quotes

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Smiling with pleasure, they went through their memories, not sad, old people's memories, but poetic, youthful ones, those impressions from the very distant past where dream merges with reality, and they laughed softly, rejoicing at something.

Leo Tolstoy
In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair, and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still stronger and purer. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery had arisen, as insoluble, urging him to love and to life.

Leo Tolstoy
So the majority of the highest classes of that age, even the popes and ecclesiastics, really believed in nothing at all. They did not believe in the Church doctrine, for they saw its insolvency; but neither could they follow Francis of Assisi, Kelchitsky, and most of the sectarians in acknowledging the moral, social teaching of Christ, for that undermined their social position. And so these people remained without any religious view of life. And, having none, they could have no standard with which to estimate what was good and what was bad art, but that of personal enjoyment.

Leo Tolstoy
I wanted to run after him, but remembered that it is ridiculous to run after one's wife's lover in one's socks; and I did not wish to be ridiculous but terrible.

Leo Tolstoy
When an individual passes from one period of life to another a time comes when he cannot go on in senseless activity and excitement as before, but has to understand that although he has out-grown what before used to direct him, this does not mean that he must live without any reasonable guidance, but rather that he must formulate for himself an understanding of life corresponding to his age, and having elucidated it must be guided by it. And in the same way a similar time must come in the growth and development of humanity.

Leo Tolstoy
The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase.

Leo Tolstoy
He [Platon Karataev] did not understand, and could not grasp the significance of words taken apart from the sentence. Every word and every action of his was the expression of a force uncomprehended by him, which was his life.

Leo Tolstoy
In order that the conditions of a life contrary to the consciousness of humanity should change and be replaced by one which is in accord with it, the outworn public opinion must be superseded by a new and living one.

Leo Tolstoy
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

Leo Tolstoy
Science and art are as closely bound together as the lungs and heart, so that if one organ is vitiated the other cannot act rightly.

Leo Tolstoy
I was now prepared to accept any faith so long as it did not demand a direct denial of reason, which would have been a deceit.

Leo Tolstoy
I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine.

Leo Tolstoy
Loving with human love, one may pass from love to hatred; but divine love cannot change. Nothing, not even death, can shatter it. It is all the very nature of the soul. Love is life. All, all that I understand, I understand only because of love. All is bound up in love alone. Love is God and dying means for me a particle of love, to go back to the universal and eternal source of love.

Leo Tolstoy
The chief attraction of military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness.

Leo Tolstoy
Religion reveals the meaning of life, and science only applies this meaning to the course of circumstances.

Leo Tolstoy
I say that the God who created the world in six days and who sent His son, and also his son himself, are not God, but that God is the one existing, incomparable good, the beginning of everything.

Leo Tolstoy
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.

Leo Tolstoy
If every man could act as he chose, the whole of history would be a tissue of disconnected accidents.

Leo Tolstoy
If it were not so frightening it would be amusing to observe the pride and complacency with which we, like children, take apart the watch, pull out the spring and make a toy of it, and are then surprised when the watch stops working.

Leo Tolstoy
I asked: 'What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause, and space?' And I replied to quite another question: 'What is the meaning of my life within time, cause, and space?' With the result that, after long efforts of thought, the answer I reached was: 'None'.

Leo Tolstoy
No matter when, at whatever moment, if she were asked what she was thinking about she could reply quite correctly - one thing, her happiness and her unhappiness.

Leo Tolstoy
School is established, not in order that it should be convenient for the children to study, but that teachers should be able to teach in comfort. The children's conversations, motion, merriment are not convenient for the teacher, and so in the schools, which are built on the plan of prisons, are prohibited.

Leo Tolstoy
For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite.

Leo Tolstoy
Arriving at infinitesimals, mathematics, the most exact of sciences, abandons the process of analysis and enters on the new process of the integration of unknown, infinitely small, quantities.

Leo Tolstoy
Until you do what you believe in, you don't know whether you believe it or not.

Leo Tolstoy
There lay between them, separating them, that same terrible line of the unknown and of fear, like the line separating the living from the dead.

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

Leo Tolstoy
If there was a reason why he preferred the liberal tendency to the conservative one (also held to by many of his circle), it was not because he found the liberal tendency more sensible, but it more closely suited his manner of life.

Leo Tolstoy
I love her not with my mind or my imagination, but with my whole being. Loving her I feel myself to be an integral part of all God's joyous world.

Leo Tolstoy
Slavery results from laws, laws are made by governments, and, therefore people can only be freed from slavery by the abolition of governments.... And it is time for people to understand that governments not only are not necessary, but are harmful and most highly immoral institutions, in which a self-respecting, honest man cannot and must not take part.

Leo Tolstoy