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Leo Tolstoy
Leo Nikolayevitch Tolstoy (Ле́в Никола́евич Толсто́й) (9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910) Russian writer, reformer, and moral thinker.
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- All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
- Anna Karénina First Lines; Variants: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
- There is one evident, indubitable manifestation of the Divinity, and that is the laws of right which are made known to the world through Revelation.
- Anna Karénina Part 8. Ch. 19
- I cannot recall those years without horror, loathing, and heart-rending pain. I killed people in war, challenged men to duels with the purpose of killing them, and lost at cards; I squandered the fruits of the peasants' toil and then had them executed; I was a fornicator and a cheat. Lying, stealing, promiscuity of every kind, drunkenness, violence, murder— there was not a crime I did not commit... Thus I lived for ten years.
- Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth.
- The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgment and profession of the truth by each one of us.
- The Kingdom of God Ch. 12
- Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.
- In historical events great men— so-called— are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.
- Martin's soul grew glad. He crossed himself put on his spectacles, and began reading the Gospel just where it had opened; and at the top of the page he read: I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in. And at the bottom of the page he read: Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren even these least, ye did it unto me (Matt. xxv). And Martin understood that his dream had come true; and that the Saviour had really come to him that day, and he had welcomed him.
- Where Love Is, God Is (1885)
- God is the infinite ALL. Man is only a finite manifestation of Him.
Or better yet:
God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part.
God alone exists truly. Man manifests Him in time, space and matter. The more God's manifestation in man (life) unites with the manifestations (lives) of other beings, the more man exists. This union with the lives of other beings is accomplished through love.
God is not love, but the more there is of love, the more man manifests God, and the more he truly exists...
We acknowledge God only when we are conscious of His manifestation in us. All conclusions and guidelines based on this consciousness should fully satisfy both our desire to know God as such as well as our desire to live a life based on this recognition.
What Men Live By (1881)
- Go— take the mother's soul, and learn three truths: Learn What dwells in man, What is not given to man, and What men live by. When thou hast learnt these things, thou shalt return to heaven.
- 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.
- Then I remembered the first lesson God had set me: "Learn what dwells in man." And I understood that in man dwells Love! I was glad that God had already begun to show me what He had promised, and I smiled for the first time.
- The man is making preparations for a year, and does not know that he will die before evening. And I remembered God's second saying, "Learn what is not given to man."
'What dwells in man" I already knew. Now I learnt what is not given him. It is not given to man to know his own needs.
- When the woman showed her love for the children that were not her own, and wept over them, I saw in her the living God, and understood What men live by.
- And the angel's body was bared, and he was clothed in light so that eye could not look on him; and his voice grew louder, as though it came not from him but from heaven above. And the angel said:
I have learnt that all men live not by care for themselves, but by love.
It was not given to the mother to know what her children needed for their life. Nor was it given to the rich man to know what he himself needed. Nor is it given to any man to know whether, when evening comes, he will need boots for his body or slippers for his corpse.
I remained alive when I was a man, not by care of myself, but because love was present in a passer-by, and because he and his wife pitied and loved me. The orphans remained alive, not because of their mother's care, but because there was love in the heart of a woman a stranger to them, who pitied and loved them. And all men live not by the thought they spend on their own welfare, but because love exists in man.
I knew before that God gave life to men and desires that they should live; now I understood more than that.
I understood that God does not wish men to live apart, and therefore he does not reveal to them what each one needs for himself; but he wishes them to live united, and therefore reveals to each of them what is necessary for all.
I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.
Attributed:
- A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul.
- 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.
- Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth.
- Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
- Variant: Everybody thinks of changing humanity, but nobody thinks of changing himself.
- Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
- Governments need armies to protect them against their enslaved and oppressed subjects.
- Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.
- History would be wonderful thing— if it were only true.
- Variant: History would be an excellent thing if only it were true.
- If he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because ... its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling — killing
- I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
- If I were told that what I shall write will be read in twenty years by the children of today and that they will weep and smile over it and will fall in love with life, I would devote all my life and all my strengths to it.
- If one has no vanity in this life of ours, there is no sufficient reason for living.
- If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.
- If we would only testify to the truth as we see it, it would turn out that there are hundreds, thousands, even millions of other people just as we are, who see the truth as we do... and are only waiting, again as we are, for someone to proclaim it. The Kingdom of God is within 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.
- In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
- 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.
- Joy can be real only if people look on their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.
- Laws are rules, made by people who govern by means of organized violence, for non-compliance with which the non-complier is subjected to blows, to loss of liberty, or even to being murdered.
- Life consists in penetrating the unknown, and fashioning our actions in accord with the new knowledge thus acquired.
- Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.
- Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal—that there is no human relationship between master and slave.
- Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.
- Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.
- Only those live who do good.
- 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, it will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies.
- The poet takes the best things out of his life and puts them into his work. Hence his work is beautiful and his life bad.
- The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God.
- The Kingdom of God is within you.. and all beings.
- The only thing that we know is that we know nothing— and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.
- The simplest and shortest ethical precept is to be served by others as little as possible, and to serve others as much as possible.
- The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.
- There is only one time that is important -- NOW! It is the most important time because it is the only time that we have any power.
- To get rid of an enemy one must love him.
- True life is lived when tiny changes occur.
- Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.
- Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.
Quotes by others about Tolstoy
- The truth is that Tolstoy, with his immense genius, with his colossal faith, with his vast fearlessness and vast knowledge of life, is deficient in one faculty and one faculty alone. He is not a mystic; and therefore he has a tendency to go mad. Men talk of the extravagances and frenzies that have been produced by mysticism; they are a mere drop in the bucket. In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic. ...The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal chamber, has been mysticism— the belief that logic is misleading, and that things are not what they seem. ~ G. K. Chesterton
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