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Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Quotes

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Famous Leo Tolstoy Quotes

“One of the commonest and most generally accepted delusions is that every man can be qualified in some particular way -- said to be kind, wicked, stupid, energetic, apathetic, and so on. People are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, more often wise than stupid, more often energetic than apathetic or vice versa; but it could never be true to say of one man that he is kind or wise, and of another that he is wicked or stupid. Yet we are always classifying mankind in this way. And it is wrong. Human beings are like rivers; the water is one and the same in all of them but every river is narrow in some places, flows swifter in others; here it is broad, there still, or clear, or cold, or muddy or warm. It is the same with men. Every man bears within him the germs of every human quality, and now manifests one, now another, and frequently is quite unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.”

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Book:Resurrection
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“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.”

LoveHumansMayMeanSoulLove IsDyingDivineSourceEternalHatredUniversalBoundsOne LoveDivine LoveParticlesGod Is LoveHuman LoveAlone In LoveLove Is Life
Author:Leo Tolstoy
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“In vain do science and philosophy pose as the arbiters of the human mind, of which they are in fact only the servants. Religion has provided a conception of life, and science travels in the beaten path. Religion reveals the meaning of life, and science only applies this meaning to the course of circumstances.”

MindHumansPhilosophyFactsReligionCoursesPathCircumstancesVainServantMeaning Of LifeHuman MindConceptionBeatenArbiterScience And PhilosophyBeaten Path
Book:My Religion
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“The question was a fashionable one, whether a definite line exists between psychological and physiological phenomena in human activity; and if so, where it lies?”

IfsHumansLyingLinesActivityPsychologicalDefiniteFashionableHuman ActivityPhysiological
Book:The Complete Novels of Leo Tolstoy in One Premium Edition (World Classics Series): Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Resurrection, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, The Cossacks, The Death of Ivan Ilyich... (Including Biographies of the Author)
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“The artist of the future will live the ordinary life of a human being, earning his living by some kind of labour. He will strive to give the fruit of that supreme spiritual force which passes through him to the greatest number of people, because this conveying of the feelings that have been born in him to the greatest number of people is his joy and his reward. The artist of the future will not even understand how it is possible for an artist, whose joy consists in the widest dissemination of his works, to give these works only in exchange for a certain payment.”

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Author:Leo Tolstoy
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“The sobs and tears of joy he had not foreseen rose with such force within him that his whole body shook and for a long time prevented him from speaking. Falling on his knees by her bed. He held his wife's hand to his lips and kissed it, and her hand responded to his kisses with weak movement of finger. Meanwhile, at the foot of the bed, in the midwife's expert hands, like the flame of a lamp, flickered the life of a human being who had never existed before.”

LifeHumansLongWholeBodyHandsJoyFallForceHuman BeingsWifeFeetMovementTearsBedKissingLong TimeWeakRoseFingersLipsKneesFlamesExpertsLampsMidwifeForeseenKissing HerLips And KissingTears Of Joy
Author:Leo Tolstoy
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“Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an instrument for the attainment of the government's ambitious and mercenary aims, and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense, and conscience by the governed, and a slavish submission to those who hold power. That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed. Patriotism is slavery.”

HumansWarGovernmentCommonConscienceDignityAimSlaveryInstrumentsCommon SensePatriotismAnti WarAmbitiousSubmissionSimplestAttainmentHuman DignityRenunciationMercenary
Book:The kingdom of God: and peace essays
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“[D]iscipline consists in this, that the men who undergo the instruction and have followed it for a certain time are completely deprived of everything which is precious to a man-of the chief human property, rational freedom-and become submissive, machine-like implements of murder in the hands of their organized hierarchic authorities.”

MenHumansWarHandsCertainHe ManAuthorityMachinesMurderPropertyRationalChiefsOrganizedInstructionAnti WarDeprivedSubmissive
Book:The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy
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“There are two methods of human activity - and according to which one of these two kinds of activity people mainly follow, are there two kinds of people: One use their reason to learn what is good and what is bad and they act according to this knowledge; the other act as they want to and then they use their reason to prove that that which they did was good and that which they didn't do was bad.”

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Book:The Journal of Leo Tolstoi 1895~1899 (Abridged)
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“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.”

ThinkingMenLoveNeedsShouldHumansDoeImportantQualityKnownLeaderDoubtSpecialStupidHighestArmyBraveConvincedAbsenceContraryPitySufficientAttributesTendernessUnjustHumaneAbsentCommandersLove PoetryPhilosophicInquiringAbsent Minded
Author:Leo Tolstoy
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“So long as people do not consider all men as their brothers and do not consider human life as the most sacred thing, which rather than destroy they must consider it their first and foremost duty to support; that is so long as people do not behave towards one another in a religious manner, they will always ruin one another's lives for the sake of personal gain.”

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Author:Leo Tolstoy
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“Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is a great matter. Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man's reasonable perception into feeling.”

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Book:WHAT IS ART? & WHEREIN IS TRUTH IN ART? (Meditations on Aesthetics & Literature): On the Significance of Science and Art, Shakespeare and the Drama, The Works of Guy De Maupassant, A. Stockham'sTokology, Amiel's Diary, S. T. Seménov's Peasant Stories, Stop and Think!...
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“Man by violating his own feelings becomes cruel. And how deeply seated in the human heart is the injunction not to take life.”

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Book:The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Memoirs, Letters & Essays on Art, Religion and Politics: Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Resurrection, The Death of Ivan Ilych, A Confession, The Cossacks, Correspondences with Gandhi, The Kreutzer Sonata, Fables and Stories for Childrenand Many More
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“Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship both with him who produced the art, and with all those who, simultaneously, previously, or subsequently, receive the same artistic impression. Art is a human activity- that one man consciously by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that others are touched by these feelings and also experience them.”

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Author:Leo Tolstoy
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