Leo Tolstoy Quotes
-
To be good and lead a good life means to give to others more than one takes from them.
-
Every one who has a heart and eyes sees that you, working men, are obliged to pass your lives in want and in hard labor, which is useless to you, while other men, who do not work, enjoy the fruits of your labor-that you are the slaves of these men, and that this ought not to exist.
-
The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.
-
Tell people that war is an evil, and they will laugh; for who does not know it? Tell them that patriotism is an evil, and most of them will agree, but with a reservation. 'Yes,' they will say, 'wrong patriotism is an evil; but there is another kind, the kind we hold.' But just what this good patriotism is, no one explains.
-
The Quakers sent me books, from which I learnt how they had, years ago, established beyond doubt the duty for a Christian of fulfilling the command of non-resistance to evil by force, and had exposed the error of the Church's teaching in allowing war and capital punishment.
-
You will die - and it will all be over. You will die and find out everything - or cease asking.
-
Stephan Arkadievich chose neither his attitudes nor his opinions, no, the attitudes and opinions came to him on their own, just as he chose neither the style of his hat nor of his coats but got what people were wearing.
-
Three years ago he was an honest, self-denying youth, ready to devote himself to every good cause; now he was a corrupt and refined egotist, given over to personal enjoyment. … And all this terrible transformation took place in him only because he ceased to have faith in himself, and began to believe in others.
-
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.
-
Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.
-
The relation of word to thought, and the creation of new concepts is a complex, delicate and enigmatic process unfolding in our soul.
-
The happiness of men consists in life. And life is in labor.
-
Having acknowledged the measure of the good to be pleasure, i.e., beauty, the European upper classes went back in their comprehension of art to the gross conception of the primitive Greeks which Plato had already condemned. And with this understanding of life, a theory of art was formulated.
-
The most important person is the one you are with in this moment.
-
The error arises from the learned jurists deceiving themselves and others, by asserting that government is not what it really is, one set of men banded together to oppress another set of men, but, as shown by science, is the representation of the citizens in their collective capacity.
-
All our problems are caused by forgetting what lives within us, and we sell our souls for the 'bowl of stew' of bodily satisfactions.
-
The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.
-
Understand then all of you, especially the young, that to want to impose an imaginary state of government on others by violence is not only a vulgar superstition, but even a criminal work. Understand that this work, far from assuring the well-being of humanity is only a lie, a more or less unconscious hypocrisy, camouflaging the lowest passions we posses.
-
Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.
-
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.
-
He did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart from their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation of an activity unknown to him, which was his life.
-
One can insult an honest man or an honest woman, but to tell a thief that he is a thief is merely la constation d'un fait The establishing of a fact.
-
Wealth brings a heavy purse; poverty, a light spirit.
-
Vengeance is mine; I will repay.