Quotes from Leo Tolstoy

A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.

Men pray to the Almighty to relieve poverty. But poverty comes not from God's laws-it is blasphemy of the worst kind to say that. Poverty comes from man's injustice to his fellow man.

All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.

There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.

Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.

Man must not check his reason by tradition, but, contrariwise, must check tradition by reason.

Where there is a man who does not labor because another is compelled to work for him, there slavery is.

A Gentleman is a man who will pay his gambling debts even when he knows he has been cheated.

Every man and every living creature has a sacred right to the gladness of springtime.

There can be only one permanent revolution- a moral one: the regeneration of the inner man.

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

Between the murder of an animal and the murder of a man, there's no more than ONE step!

My field was God's earth. Wherever I ploughed, there was my field. Land was free. It was a thing no man called his own. Labor was the only thing men called their own.

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

And the angel said - "I have learned that every man lives not through care of himself, but by love".

The recognition of the sanctity of the life of every man is the first and only basis of all morality.

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.

The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.

Man recognizes that he will not die, only when he recognizes that he was never born, but always has been, is, and will be.

In order to obtain and hold power, a man must love it.

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to the establishment of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by the recognition and profession of the truth by every man.

Government is violence, Christianity is meekness, non-resistance, love. And, therefore, government cannot be Christian, and a man who wishes to be a Christian must not serve government.

Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is a great matter. Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man's reasonable perception into feeling.

He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered , with difficulty recognizing the beauty for which he picked and ruined it.