Quotes from Leo Tolstoy

After reading Tolstoy's lengthy essay "On Life" in 1889, Ernest Crosby, a thirty-three-year-old American diplomat who was working in Egypt at the time, decided that diplomacy wasn't his calling and instead dedicated the next twenty-seven years of his life to writing and lecturing about Tolstoy throughout the United States.

Women are the chief stumbling block in a man's career. It's hard to love a woman and do anything. There's only one way of having love conveniently without its being a hindrance—that's marriage.

When you feel depressed - have a cigarette or a drink or, best of all, make love, and it will pass.

On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature.

The recognition of the life of every man as sacred is the first and only basis of all ethics.

People speak of misfortunes and sufferings," remarked Pierre, "but if at this moment I were asked: 'Would you rather be what you were before you were taken prisoner, or go through all this again?' then for heaven's sake let me again have captivity and horseflesh! 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.

Your whole life should be lived as a heroic deed

German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth—science—which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.

all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity.

Influence in society, however, is capital which has to be economized if it is to last.

To accept the dignity of another person is an axiom. It has nothing to do with subduing, supporting, or giving charity to other people.

Cualquier acto de un loco, de un borracho o de un hombre excitado se presenta, ante los ojos de quien conoce el estado de ánimo del autor del hecho, como menos libre y más sujeto a las leyes de la necesidad, y más libre y menos sometido a la necesidad a juicio de quien no lo conoce.

My second sentiment was a craving for love. I wanted every one to know me and to love me. I wanted to be able to utter my name — Nicola Irtenieff — and at once to see every one thunderstruck at it, and come crowding round me and thanking me for something or another, I hardly knew what.

If the source of power lies neither in the physical nor in the moral qualities of him who possesses it, it must evidently be looked for elsewhere—in the relation to the people of the man who wields the power. And that is how power is understood by the science of jurisprudence

Reason discovered the struggle for existence and the law requiring that we oppress everyone who impedes the gratification of our desires. That is reason's conclusion. But loving one's fellow man reason could not discover because it is not reasonable.

Men are like rivers: the water is the same in each, and alike in all; but every river is narrow here, is more rapid there, here slower, there broader, now clear, now cold, now dull, now warm. It is the same with men. Every man carries in himself the germs of every human quality, and sometimes one manifests itself, sometimes another, and the man often becomes unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.

They're also people. Right, lads?

Till now I have always, thank God, been my children's friend and had their full confidence," said she, repeating the mistake of so many parents who imagine that their children have no secrets from them.

Ah, how good! How nice!" he said to himself, when he remembered that his wife and the French were no more.

Spiritual activity, education, civilization, culture, the idea are all vague, indefinite concepts, under the banner of which it is quite convenient to use words that have a still less clear meaning and therefore can easily be plugged into any theory.

Simplicity is submission to the will of God; you cannot escape from Him. And they are simple. They do not talk, but act. The spoken word is silver but the unspoken is golden. Man can be master of nothing while he fears death, but he who does not fear it possesses all. If there were no suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself.

Everything seemed so futile and insignificant in comparison with the stern and solemn train of thought that weakness from loss of blood, suffering, and the nearness of death aroused in him . Looking into Napoleon's eyes Prince Andrew thought of the insignificance of greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one alive could understand or explain.

Yes indeed, of the essence... from the mouth of the Tsar!" came the sobbing voice of Count Rostov from the back. He hadn't heard a word, but in his own way he seemed to understand.

there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom.