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Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Quotes

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Famous Leo Tolstoy Quotes

“Having learnt from experiment and argument that a stone falls downwards, a man indubitably believes this, and always expects the law he has learnt to be fulfilled. But learning just as certainly that his will is subject to laws, he does not and cannot believe it. However often experiment and reasoning may show a man that under the same conditions and with the same character he will do the same thing as before, yet when, under the same conditions and with the same character, he approaches for the thousandth time the action that always ends in the same way, he feels as certainly convinced as before the experiment that he can act as he pleases. Every man, savage or sage, however incontestably reason and experiment may prove to him that it is impossible to imagine two different courses of action in precisely the same conditions, feels that without this irrational conception (which constitutes the essence of freedom) he cannot imagine life. He feels that, however impossible it may be, it is so, for without this conceptions of freedom not only would he be unable to understand life, but he would be unable to live for a single moment. He could not live, because all man's efforts, all his impulses to life, are only efforts to increase freedom. Wealth and poverty, fame and obscurity, power and subordination, strength and weakness, health and disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion and hunger, virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of freedom. A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of life. If the conception of freedom appears to reason a senseless contradiction, like the possibility of performing two actions at one and the same instant of time, or of an effect without a cause, that only proves that consciousness is not subject to reason.”

ReasonFree Will
Book:War and Peace
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“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.”

IfsReasonWholeTogetherJusticeDoubtEffectsAimDislikeRhymeVulgarImmoralVengeancePaganCrude
Book:Tolstoy's Letters: 1880-1910
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“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.”

IfsMenMeanStatesReasonLiteratureHalfConscienceContraryOur TimeOne Half
Book:The Spiritual Works of Leo Tolstoy: A Confession, The Kingdom of God is Within You, What I Believe, Christianity and Patriotism, Reason and Religion, The Gospel in Brief and more: Lessons on What it Means to be a True Christian From the Greatest Russian Novelists and Author of War and Peace & Anna Karenina (Including Letter to a Kind YouthandCorrespondences with Gandhi)
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“At that instant he knew that all his doubts, even the impossibility of believing with his reason, of which he was aware in himself, did not in the least hinder his turning to God. All of that now floated out of his soul like dust. To whom was he to turn if not to Him in whose hands he felt himself, his soul, and his love?”

IfsBelieveSoulReasonHandsTurnsFeltDoubtDustInstantHis LoveImpossibilityHinder
Book:Anna Karenina: Tolstoy's Collections
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“But that had been grief--this was joy. Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the ordinary conditions of life; they were loopholes, as it were, in that ordinary life through which there came glimpses of something sublime. And in the contemplation of this sublime something the soul was exalted to inconceivable heights of which it had before had no conception, while reason lagged behind, unable to keep up with it.”

SoulReasonJoyGriefBehindsConditionsOrdinaryHeightContemplationConceptionSublimeGlimpseExaltedOrdinary LifeLoopholes
Book:ANNA KARENINA
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“Music makes me forget my real situation. It transports me into a state which is not my own. Under the influence of music I really seem to feel what I do not feel, to understand what I do not understand, to have powers which I cannot have. Music seems to me to act like yawning or laughter; I have no desire to sleep, but I yawn when I see others yawn; with no reason to laugh, I laugh when I hear others laugh. And music transports me immediately into the condition of soul in which he who wrote the music found himself at that time. ~The Kreutzer Sonata”

FeelsRealSoulStatesReasonSeemsDesireFoundMy OwnSleepForgetSituationLaughingInfluenceConditionsLaughterNo ReasonTransportYawningSonatas
Book:LEO TOLSTOY – The Ultimate Short Stories Collection: 120+ Titles in One Volume (World Classics Series): The Kreutzer Sonata, The Forged Coupon, Hadji Murad, Alyosha the Pot, Master and Man, Father Sergius, Diary of a Lunatic, The Cossacks, My Dream, The Young Tsar, Fables and Stories for Children...
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“I'll get angry in the same way with the coachman Ivan, argue in the same way, speak my mind inappropriately, there will be the same wall between my soul's holy of holies and other people, even my wife, I'll accuse her in the same way of my own fear and then regret it, I'll fail in the same way to understand with my reason why I pray, and yet I will pray--but my life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!”

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Author:Leo Tolstoy
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“Where did I get it from? Was it by reason that I attained to the knowledge that I must love my neighbour and not throttle him? They told me so when I was a child, and I gladly believed it, because they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason! Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.”

ChildrenSoulReasonLawDesireExistenceStruggleSatisfactionMy SoulNeighbourUnreasonableHinderDeductionsLoving OthersThrottleStruggle For Existence
Author:Leo Tolstoy
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“The feeling of patriotism - It is an immoral feeling because, instead of confessing himself a son of God . . . or even a free man guided by his own reason, each man under the influence of patriotism confesses himself the son of his fatherland and the slave of his government, and commits actions contrary to his reason and conscience.”

MenReasonFeelingsGovernmentActionInfluenceSonConscienceSlaveContraryCommitPatriotismPatriotImmoralFree ManScoundrelsConfessingFatherland
Book:I Cannot be Silent: Writings on Politics, Art and Religion by Leo 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.”

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

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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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