Leo Tolstoy quotes

But the peasants -- how do the peasants die?

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• death

There is only one time that is important -- NOW! It is the most important time because it is the only time hat we have any power.

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• present

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

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• art

Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.

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• abnormal

Conceit is incompatible with understanding.

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• vanity

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.

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• humanity

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.

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• continues

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

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• beauty

A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul.

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• authors

War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it.

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• assume

And all people live, Not by reason of any care they have for themselves, But by the love for them that is in other people.

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• care

All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.

• 1
• consists

The strongest of all warriors are these two

• 1
• patience

Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.

• 1
• death

I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.

• 1
• liberalism

It is not beauty that endears; It's love that makes us see beauty

• endears

Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.

• love

War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.

• conscience

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.

• answering

Though it is possible to utter words only with the intention to fulfill the will of God, it is very difficult not to think about the impression which they will produce on men and not to form them accordingly. But deeds you can do quite unknown to men, only for God. And such deeds are the greatest joy that a man can experience.

• goodness

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

• art

The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all its beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.

• truth

If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.

• certainly

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.

• actions

The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.

• reading

Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking...

• honesty

We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening.

• cease

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.

• truth

Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself.

• body

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.

• food

But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.

• acquisition

Spring is the time of plans and projects.

• plans

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.

• consciences

The business of art lies just in this, -- to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible.

• argument

The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.

• patriotism

Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.

• hypocrisy

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.

• association

The best generals I have known were... stupid or absent-minded men. Not only does a good army commander not need any special qualities, on the contrary he needs the absence of the highest and best human attributes -- love, poetry, tenderness, and philosophic inquiring doubt. He should be limited, firmly convinced that what he is doing is very important (otherwise he will not have sufficient patience), and only then will he be a brave leader. God forbid that he should be humane, should love, or pity, or think of what is just and unjust.

• military

An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life - becoming a better person.

• life

The subject of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch and pin down in words--that is, to describe directly the life, not only of humanity, but even of a single people, appears to be impossible.

• history

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.

• science

In historic events, the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself. Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of history and predestined from eternity.

• greatness

Joy can only be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.

• service

If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.

• look

The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby justifies, in a way, all similar actions that lie outside those limits.

• actions

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

• family

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

• another

Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the state, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment and its wars.

• christianity

To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.

• honesty

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

• alone

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.

• animals

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.

• change