Leo Tolstoy Quotes

Life did not stop, and one had to live.

God is the same everywhere.

He is not apprehended by reason, but by life.

Well, pray if you like, only you'd do better to use your judgment.

We walked to meet each other up at the time of our love and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions, and there's no altering that.

There lay between them, separating them, that same terrible line of the unknown and of fear, like the line separating the living from the dead.

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.

You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom.

This history of culture will explain to us the motives, the conditions of life, and the thought of the writer or reformer.

The subject of history is the life of peoples and mankind.

Many families remain for years in the same place, though both husband and wife are sick of it, simply because there is neither complete division nor agreement between them.

Power is the sum total of the wills of the mass, transfered by express or tactic agreement to rulers chosen by the masses.

Power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.

Are we not all flung into the world for no other purpose than to hate each other, and so to torture ourselves and one another?

I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.

She did not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could not talk of outside matters.

The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed in two ways: by a change of life or by a change of conscience.

the same question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?"... p982

Why nowadays there's a new fashion every day.

What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the world!

ٰ"The Most difficult thing but an essential one – is to love Life, to love it even while one suffers, because Life is all, Life is God, and to love Life means to love God.

How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what?... All will end in death, all!

There is trouble with a wife, but it's even worse with a woman who is not a wife.

God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part.

So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and for what purpose he had been placed in the word.

In life, in true life, there can be nothing better than what is. Wanting something different than what is, is blasphemy.

All art has this characteristic-it unites people.

There is only one way to put an end to evil, and that is to do good for evil.

To know God and to live is the same thing. God is Life.

The best thoughts most often come in the morning after waking, while still in bed or while walking.

What is important is not the length of life, but the depth of life. What is important is not to make life longer, but to take your soul out of time, as every sublime act does.

History is the product of vast, amorphous and indecipherable social movements.

Under the influence of music, it seems that I feel what I do not really feel, that I understand what I do not understand, that I do what I cannot do.

But that's just the aim of civilization - to make everything a source of enjoyment.

The highest wisdom has but one science-the science of the whole-the science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it.

My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and am in doubt most of the time.

The artist's mission must not be to produce an irrefutable solution to a problem, but to compel us to love life in all its countless and inexhaustible manifestations.

The government in which I believe is that which is based on mere moral sanction...the real law lives in the kindness of our hearts. If our hearts are empty, no law or political reform can fill them.

Only those live who do good.

I'd rather end up wishing I hadn’t than end up wishing I had.

Every revolution by force only puts more violent means of enslavement into the hands of the persons in power.

In order to obtain and hold power a man must love it. Thus the effort to get it is not likely to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities of pride, craft and cruelty.

The compassionate are not rich; therefore, the rich are not compassionate.

To speak of it would be giving importance to that which has none.

I have learned what must be, and therefore have come to see the whole horror of what is.

We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them.

Here I am alive, and it's not my fault, so I have to try and get by as best I can without hurting anybody until death takes over.

And that which yesterday was the novel opinion of one man, to-day becomes the general opinion of the majority.

Reason unites us, not only with our contemporaries, but with men who lived two thousand years before us, and with those who will live after us.

Perfection is impossible without humility. Why should I strive for perfection, if I am already good enough?