Famous Quotes by Leo Tolstoy |Short Quotes by Leo Tolstoy| Famous Peoples English Quotes

  1. We are all created to be miserable, and we all know it, and all invent means of deceiving each other. And when one sees the truth, what is one to do?
  2. He stepped down, avoiding any long look at her as one avoids long looks at the sun, but seeing her as one sees the sun, without looking.
  3. Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man’s life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible.
  4. Excuse me he added, taking the opera glasses out of her hands and looking over her bare shoulder at the row of boxes opposite, ‘I’m afraid I’m becoming ridiculous
  5. People usually think that progress consists in the increase of knowledge, in the improvement of life, but that isn’t so. Progress consists only in the greater clarification of answers to the basic questions of life. The truth is always accessible to a man. It can’t be otherwise, because a man’s soul is a divine spark, the truth itself. It’s only a matter of removing from this divine spark (the truth) everything that obscures it. Progress consists, not in the increase of truth, but in freeing it from its wrappings. The truth is obtained like gold, not by letting it grow bigger, but by washing off from it everything that isn’t gold.
  6. Unfortunately not only were the rulers, who were considered supernatural beings, benefited by having the peoples in subjection, but as a result of the belief in, and during the rule of, these pseudo divine beings, ever larger and larger circles of people grouped and established themselves around them, and under an appearance of governing took advantage of the people. And when the old deception of a supernatural and God-appointed authority had dwindled away these men were only concerned to devise a new one which like its predecessor should make it possible to hold the people in bondage to a limited number of rulers.
  7. Seize the moments of happiness, love, and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.
  8. My life had come to a sudden stop. I was able to breathe, to eat, to drink, to sleep. I could not indeed help doing so, but there was no real life in me.
  9. The Lord had given them a day and the Lord had given them the strength. And the day and the strength had been dedicated to labor, and the labor was its reward. Who was the labor for? What would be its fruits? These were irrelevant and idle questions.
  10. Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.
  11. And the light by which she had read the book filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and evil, flared up more brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that had been in darkness, flickered, began to grow dim, and was quenched forever.
  12. The law of violence is not a law, but a simple fact that can only be a law when it does not meet with protest and opposition. It is like the cold, darkness, and weight, which people had to put up with until recently when warmth, illumination, and leverage were discovered.
  13. He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.
  14. Don’t you know that you are all my life to me? But the peace I do not know, and can’t give to you. My whole being, my love…yes! I cannot think about you and about myself separately. You and I are one to me. And I do not see before us the possibility of peace either for me or for you. I see the possibility of despair, misfortune…or of happiness-what happiness! Is it impossible?” Vronksy
  15. There are always so many conjectures as to the issue of any event that, whatever the outcome, there will always be people to say: ‘I said then that it would be so’
  16. I thought: I am perishing of cold and hunger, and here is a man thinking only of how to clothe himself and his wife, and how to get bread for themselves. He cannot help me. When the man saw me he frowned and became still more terrible, and passed me by on the other side. I despaired, but suddenly I heard him coming back. I looked up, and did not recognize the same man: before, I had seen death in his face, but now he was alive, and I recognized in him the presence of God.
  17. 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.
  18. There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth.
  19. I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.
  20. When I started life Hegelianism was the basis of everything: it was in the air, found expression in magazine and newspaper articles, in novels and essays, in art, in histories, in sermons, and in conversation. A man unacquainted with Hegel had no right to speak: he who wished to know the truth studied Hegel. Everything rested on him, and suddenly forty years have gone by and there is nothing left of him, he is not even mentioned – as though he had never existed. And what is most remarkable is that, like pseudo-Christianity, Hegelianism fell not because anyone refuted it, but because it suddenly became evident that neither the one nor the other was needed by our learned, educated world.
  21. 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.
  22. People are always happy where there is love because of their happiness in themselves.
  23. A Christian cannot help being free, because, in the pursuit and attainment of his object, no one can either hinder or retard him.
  24. Do 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!
  25. When the Indians complain that the English have enslaved them it is as if drunkards complained that the spirit-dealers who have settled among them have enslaved them. You tell them that they might give up drinking, but they reply that they are so accustomed to it that they cannot abstain and that they must have alcohol to keep up their energy. Is it not the same thing with the millions of people who submit to thousands or even to hundreds, of others — of their own or other nations? If the people of India are enslaved by violence it is only because they themselves live and have lived by violence, and do not recognize the eternal law of love inherent in humanity.
  26. If a man does not work at necessary and good things, then he will work at unnecessary and stupid things
  27. 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.
  28. All violence consists of some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.
  29. In marriage the great thing was love, and that with love one would always be happy, for happiness rests only on oneself.
  30. By digging into our souls, we often dig up what might better have remained there unnoticed.” Alexis Alexandrovich
  31. All our problems are caused by forgetting what lives within us, and we sell our souls for the bowl of stew of bodily satisfaction.
  32. The whole trouble lies in that people think that there are conditions excluding the necessity of love in their intercourse with man, but such conditions do not exist. Things may be treated without love; one may chop wood, make bricks, forge iron without love, but one can no more deal with people without love than one can handle bees without care.
  33. 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.
  34. Work is the inevitable condition of human life, the true source of human welfare.
  35. In spite of death, he felt the need for life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still stronger and purer. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery had arisen, as insoluble, urging him to love and to life.
  36. It’s not so much that he can’t fall in love, but he has not the weakness necessary.
  37. If a man aspires toward a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.
  38. Man has received directly from God only one instrument wherewith to know himself and to know his relation to the universe–he has no other–and that instrument is the reason.
  39. 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.
  40. If you love me as you say you do,’ she whispered, ‘make it so that I am at peace.

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