Leo Tolstoy - Live Quotes

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

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
If he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because...its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling - killing.

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
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
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
It is possible to live only as long as life intoxicates us; once we are sober we cannot help seeing that it is all a delusion, a stupid delusion.

Leo Tolstoy
And the angel said - "I have learned that every man lives not through care of himself, but by love"...

Leo Tolstoy
One can live splendidly in the world, if one can work and love, work for that which one loves, and love that at which one works.

Leo Tolstoy
If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one's reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state.

Leo Tolstoy
Our whole life is taken up with anxiety for personal security, with preparations for living, so that we really never live at all.

Leo Tolstoy
There is only one enduring happiness in life—to live for others.

Leo Tolstoy
The unhappiness of our life; patch up our false way of life as we will, propping it up by the aid of the sciences and arts - that life becomes feebler, sicklier, and more tormenting every year; every year the number of suicides and the avoidance of motherhood increases; every year the people of that class become feebler; every year we feel the increasing gloom of our lives. Evidently salvation is not to be found by increasing the comforts and pleasures of life, medical treatments, artificial teeth and hair, breathing exercises, massage, and so forth;... It is impossible to remedy this by any amusements, comforts, or powders - it can only be remedied by a change of life.

Leo Tolstoy
Reason unites us, not only with our contemporaries, but with men who lived two thousand years before us, and with those who will live after us.

Leo Tolstoy
What is bad? What is good? What should one love, what hate? Why live, and what am I? What is lie, what is death? What power rules over everything?" he asked himself. And there was no answer to any of these questions except one, which was not logical and was not at all an answer to these questions. This answer was: "You will die—and everything will end. You will die and learn everything—or stop asking.

Leo Tolstoy
Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: 'what shall we do and how shall we live

Leo Tolstoy
I looked more widely around me, I studied the lives of the masses of humanity, and I saw that, not two or three, or ten, but hundreds, thousands, millions, had so understood the meaning of life that they were able both to live and to die. All these people were well acquainted with the meaning of life and death, quietly labored, endured privation and suffering, lived and died, and saw in all this, not a vain, but a good thing.

Leo Tolstoy
Both salvation and punishment for man lie in the fact that if he lives wrongly he can befog himself so as not to see the misery of his position.

Leo Tolstoy
A person who has spoiled his stomach will criticize his meal saying that the food is bad; the same thing happens with people who are not satisfied with their lives

Leo Tolstoy
It seems that it is impossible to live without discovering the purpose of your life. And the first thing which a person should do is to understand the meaning of life. But the majority of people who consider themselves to be educated are proud that they have reached such great height that they cease to care about the meaning of existence.

Leo Tolstoy
I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.

Leo Tolstoy
He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others.

Leo Tolstoy
A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.

Leo Tolstoy
The soul is immortal- well then, if I shall always live, I must have lived before, lived for a whole eternity.

Leo Tolstoy
I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.

Leo Tolstoy
If a man, before he passed from one stage to another, could know his future life in full detail, he would have nothing to live for. It is the same with the life of humanity. If it had a programme of the life which awaited it before entering a new stage, it would be the surest sign that it was not living, nor advancing, but simply rotating in the same place.

Leo Tolstoy
When the woman showed her love for the children that were not her own, and wept over them, I saw in her the living God, and understood What men live by.

Leo Tolstoy
Service of the people by sciences and arts will only exist when men live with the people and as the people live, and without presenting any claims will offer their scientific and artistic services, which the people will be free to accept or decline as they please.

Leo Tolstoy
Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy.

Leo Tolstoy
Go — take the mother's soul, and learn three truths: Learn What dwells in man, What is not given to man, and What men live by. When thou hast learnt these things, thou shalt return to heaven.

Leo Tolstoy