Leo Tolstoy quotes:

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  • 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.

  • The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.

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

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

  • Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

  • The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.

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

  • 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.

  • Music is the shorthand of emotion.

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

  • 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.

  • In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.

  • 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.

  • One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she would not be happy

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

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

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

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

  • Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.

  • 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.

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

  • 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.

  • If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.

  • He remembered his mother's love for him, and his family's, and his friends', and the enemy's intention to kill him seemed impossible.

  • And once he had seen this, he could never again see it otherwise, just as we cannot reconstruct an illusion once it has been explained.

  • What a terrible thing war is, what a terrible thing!

  • Davout looked up and gazed intently at him. For some seconds they looked at one another, and that look saved Pierre. Apart from conditions of war and law, that look established human relations between the two men. At that moment an immense number of things passed dimly through both their minds, and they realized that they were both children of humanity and were brothers.

  • Millions of men, renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to east to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east to the west slaying their fellows.

  • It was necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power -- the soldiers who fired, or transported provisions and guns -- should consent to carry out the will of these weak individuals

  • Those are the men,' added Bolkonsky with a sigh which he could not suppress, as they went out of the palace, 'those are the men who decide the fate of nations.

  • Life meanwhile, the actual life of men with their real interests of health and sickness, labour and rest, with their interests of thought, science, poetry, music, love, affection, hatred, passion, went its way, as always, independently, apart from the political amity or enmity of Napoleon Bonaparte, and apart from all possible reforms.

  • We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not understand). The more we try to explain such events in history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to us.

  • War is the most painful act of subjection to the laws of God that can be required of the human will.

  • You consider war to be inevitable? Very good. Let everyone who advocates war be enrolled in a special regiment of advance-guards, for the front of every storm, of every attack, to lead them all!

  • Next day at the review the Tsar asked Prince Andrey where he desired to serve; and Bolkonsky ruined his chances for ever in the court world by asking to be sent to the front, instead of begging for a post in attendance on the Tsar's person.

  • Society in itself is no great harm, but unsatisfied social aspirations are a bad and ugly business. We must certainly accept, and we will.

  • I was wrong when I said that I did not regret the past. I do regret it; I weep for the past love which can never return. Who is to blame, I do not know. Love remains, but not the old love; its place remains, but it is all wasted away and has lost all strength and substance; recollections are still left, and gratitude; but

  • Everything depends on upbringing.

  • Without the support from religion--remember, we talked about it--no father, using only his own resources, would be able to bring up a child.

  • And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy.

  • I thinkif it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.

  • All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.

  • The true meaning of Christ's teaching consists in the recognition of love as the supreme law of life, and therefore not admitting any exceptions.

  • Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?

  • When politics and home life have become one and the same thing, [] then,[] it is evident that we will be in a state of total liberty or anarchy.

  • Here's my advice to you: don't marry until you can tell yourself that you've done all you could, and until you've stopped loving the women you've chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you'll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you're old and good for nothingOtherwise all that's good and lofty in you will be lost.

  • They ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox.

  • Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, that's like supposing the same candle could last you all your life

  • As a house can be only be built satisfactorily and durably when there is a foundation, and a picture can be painted only when there is something prepared to paint it on, so carnal love is only legitimate, reasonable, and lasting when it is based on the respect and love of one human being for another.

  • Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive, thought Ljewin, as he came away from the Schtscherbazkijs', and walked in the direction of his brother's lodgings. And I don't get on with other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have put myself in such a position.

  • I had begun to feel that life was a repetition of the same thing; that there was nothing new either in me or in him; and that, on the contrary, we kept going back as it were on what was old.

  • Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and agonies of the soul, but all the time his most tormenting tragedy has been, is, and will always be, the tragedy of the bedroom.

  • Here it is. Let's say you're married, you love your wife, but you're attracted by another woman.''Excuse me, but I absolutely cannot understand how after eating my fill here I could go past a bakery and steal a roll.

  • Smiling with pleasure, they went through their memories, not sad, old people's memories, but poetic, youthful ones, those impressions from the very distant past where dream merges with reality, and they laughed softly, rejoicing at something.

  • At moments of departure and a change of life, people capable of reflecting on their actions usually get into a serious state of mind. At these moments they usually take stock of the past and make plans for the future.

  • Forgive me not according to my unworthiness, but according to Thy lovingkindness.

  • The Jew is that sacred being, who has brought down from Heaven the everlasting fire, and has illumined with it the entire world. He is the religious source, spring, and fountain out of which all the rest of the peoples have drawn their beliefs and their religions.

  • Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

  • I felt a wish never to leave that room - a wish that dawn might never come, that my present frame of mind might never change.

  • Nowadays, as before, the public declaration and confession of Orthodoxy is usually encountered among dull-witted, cruel and immoral people who tend to consider themselves very important. Whereas intelligence, honesty, straightforwardness, good-naturedness and morality are qualities usually found among people who claim to be non-believers."

  • Vronsky is one of the sons of Count Kirill Ivanovitch Vronsky, and one of the finest specimens of the gilded youth of Petersburg."

  • It was as if a surplus of something so overflowed her being that it expressed itself beyond her will, now in the brightness of her glance, now in her smile. She deliberately extinguished the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in a barely noticeable smile."

  • In that brief glance Vronsky had time to notice the restrained animation that played over her face and fluttered between her shining eyes and the barely noticeable smile that curved her red lips. It was as if a surplus of something so overflowed her being that it expressed itself beyond her will, now in the brightness of her glance, now in her smile."

  • I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts."

  • Prince Andrei was one of the best dancers of his day. Natasha danced exquisitely. Her little feet in their satin dancing shoes performed their role swiftly, lightly, as if they had wings, while her face was radiant and ecstatic with happiness."

  • For love? What antediluvian notions you have! Can one talk of love in these days?" said the ambassador's wife."What's to be done? It's a foolish old fashion that's kept up still," said Vronsky."

  • Meanwhile spring arrived. My old dejection passed away and gave place to the unrest which spring brings with it, full of dreams and vague hopes and desires."

  • To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling - this is the activity of art."

  • Mais ma femme, est-ce que je l'aime? Ce n'est pas que je l'aime, c'est autre chose que je ne sais comment t'expliquer [...] Est-ce que j'aime mon doigt? Je ne l'aime pas, mais essaie un peu de me le couper..."

  • Patriotism in its simplest, clearest and most indubitable signification is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason, conscience, and a slavish enthrallment to those in power.

  • Happiness is in your ability to love others.

  • If you make it a habit not to blame others, you will feel the growth of the ability to love in your soul, and you will see the growth of goodness in your life.

  • Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.

  • An agile but unintelligent and abnormal German, possessed of the mania of grandeur.

  • As we live through thousands of dreams in our present life, so is our present life only one of many thousands of such lives which we enter from the other more real life and then return after death. Our life is but one of the dreams of that more real life, and so it is endlessly, until the very last one, the very real the life of God.

  • By digging into our souls, we often dig up what might better have remained there unnoticed." Alexis Alexandrovich

  • Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

  • Love alone is the only reasonable activity or pursuit of humankind....Fo r Love not only annihilates our fear of meaninglessness but empowers us to seek the happiness of others. And this indeed is our greatest happiness.

  • As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence - as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual.

  • ... in marriage the great thing was love, and that with love one would always be happy, for happiness rests only on oneself.

  • I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be. -Dolly

  • The Christian churches and Christianity have nothing in common save in name: they are utterly hostile opposites. The churches are arrogance, violence, usurpation, rigidity, death; Christianity is humility, penitence, submissiveness, progress, life.

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

  • The teaching of the church, theoretically astute, is a lie in practice and a compound of vulgar superstitions and sorcery.

  • We have become so accustomed to the religious lie that surrounds us that we do not notice the atrocity, stupidity and cruelty with which the teaching of the Christian church is permeated.

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

  • It is no sin to look at a nice girl.

  • All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.

  • Each person's task in life is to become an increasingly better person.

  • If you see that some aspect of your society is bad, and you want to improve it, there is only one way to do so: you have to improve people. And in order to improve people, you begin with only ONE thing: you can become better yourself.

  • I feel that I am entitled to my share of lightheartedness and there is nothing wrong with enjoying one's self simply, like a boy.

  • Boredom: the desire for desires.

  • 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.

  • Just as one candle lights another and can light thousands of other candles, so one heart illuminates another heart and can illuminate thousands of other hearts.

  • It boils down to this: we should have done with humbug, and let war be war, and not a game ... If there were none of this magnanimity business in warfare, we should never go to war, except for something worth facing certain death for.

  • It seldom happens that a man changes his life through his habitual reasoning. No matter how fully he may sense the new plans and aims revealed to him by reason, he continues to plod along in old paths until his life becomes frustrating and unbearable-he finally makes the change only when his usual life can no longer be tolerated.

  • If you're not enjoying your work, you should either change your attitude, or change your job.

  • Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.

  • I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.

  • When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.

  • 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.

  • And so the liberal tendency became a habit with Stepan Arkadyich, and he liked his newspaper, as he liked a cigar after dinner, for the slight haze it produced in his head.

  • Progress consists only in the greater clarification of answers to the basic questions of life.

  • 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...

  • We live in this world like a child who enters a room where a clever person is speaking. The child did not hear the beginning of the speech, and he leaves before the end; and there are certain things which he hears but does not understand

  • Conceit is incompatible with understanding.

  • In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning and cruelty.

  • Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!

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

  • The most mentally deranged people are certainly those who see in others indications of insanity they do not notice in themselves.

  • When you feel the desire for power, you should stay in solitude for some time

  • In difficult circumstances always act on first impressions.

  • If the thought ever comes to you that everything that you have thought about God is mistaken and that there is no God, do not be dismayed. It happens to many people. But do not think that the source of your unbelief is that there is no God.

  • The idea of beauty is the fundamental idea of everything. In the world we see only distortions of the fundamental idea, but art, by imagination, may lift itself to the height of this idea. Art is therefore akin to creation.

  • In order to correctly define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and consider it as one of the conditions of human life. ...Reflecting on it in this way, we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of effective communication between people.

  • We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is happiness. There is much, much before us.

  • Do not resist the evil-doer and take no part in doing so, either in the violent deeds of the administration, in the law courts, the collection of taxes, or above all in soldiering, and no one in the world will be able to enslave you.

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