Top 500 Leo Tolstoy Quotes (2025 Update)
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451. “Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she would not be happy.”

— Leo Tolstoy

452. “The only happy marriages I know are arranged ones.”

— Leo Tolstoy

453. “Beautiful as seemed mama’s face, it became more lovely when she smiled and seemed to enliven everything about her.”

— Leo Tolstoy

454. “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.”

— Leo Tolstoy

455. “I do value my work awfully; but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have something great – ideas, work – it’s all dust and ashes.”

— Leo Tolstoy

456. “There was no solution, save that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insolvable: One must live in the needs of the day – that is, forget oneself.”

— Leo Tolstoy

457. “The best method for a given teacher is the one which is most familiar to the teacher.”

— Leo Tolstoy

458. “He felt that he was himself and did not wish to be anyone else. He only wished now to be better than he had been formerly.”

— Leo Tolstoy

459. “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.”

— Leo Tolstoy

460. “Only greatly insolent people establish a religious law which is to be taken for granted by others, which should be accepted by everyone on faith, without any discussion or doubts. Why must people do this?”

— Leo Tolstoy

461. “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.”

— Leo Tolstoy

462. “A human can be healthy without killing animals for food.”

— Leo Tolstoy

463. “Physical violence is the basis of authority.”

— Leo Tolstoy

464. “Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?”

— Leo Tolstoy

465. “Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.”

— Leo Tolstoy

466. “There is trouble with a wife, but it’s even worse with a woman who is not a wife.”

— Leo Tolstoy

467. “Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, that’s like supposing the same candle could last you all your life.”

— Leo Tolstoy

468. “Without the support from religion – remember, we talked about it – no father, using only his own resources, would be able to bring up a child.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

470. “Conceit is incompatible with understanding.”

— Leo Tolstoy

471. “The improvement of life was only accomplished to the extent to which it was based on a change of consciousness, that is, to the extent to which the law of violence was replaced in men’s consciousness by the law of love.”

— Leo Tolstoy

472. “One may say with one’s lips: ‘I believe that God is one, and also three’ – but no one can believe it, because the words have no sense.”

— Leo Tolstoy

473. “Can it be that there is not enough space for man in this beautiful world, under those immeasurable, starry heavens?”

— Leo Tolstoy

474. “The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the greater the number of people he is connected with, the more power he has over other people, the more obvious is the predestination and inevitability of his every action.”

— Leo Tolstoy

475. “No one has yet added up all the heavy, stress-filled workdays as well as the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives that are wasted to produce the world’s amusements. It is for this reason that “amusements” are not so amusing.”

— Leo Tolstoy

476. “The compassionate are not rich; therefore, the rich are not compassionate.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

478. “Happiness consists in always aspiring perfection, the pause in any level in perfection is the pause of happiness.”

— Leo Tolstoy

479. “The magnanimity and sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed, she is so kind hearted that she can’t look at the blood, but enjoys serving the calf up with sauce.”

— Leo Tolstoy

480. “What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty.”

— Leo Tolstoy

481. “The political is not compatible with the artistic, because the former, in order to prove, has to be one-sided.”

— Leo Tolstoy

482. “I don’t think badly of people. I like everybody, and I’m sorry for everybody.”

— Leo Tolstoy

483. “All that day she had had the feeling that she was playing in the theatre with actors better than herself and that her poor playing spoiled the whole thing.”

— Leo Tolstoy

484. “Meanwhile spring arrived. My old dejection passed away and gave place to the unrest which spring brings with it, full of dreams and vague hopes and desires.”

— Leo Tolstoy

485. “It seems as though mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and forgiveness of injuries – and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing one another.”

— Leo Tolstoy

486. “But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.”

— Leo Tolstoy

487. “With one hand I take thousands of rubles from the poor, and with the other I hand back a few kopecks.”

— Leo Tolstoy

488. “No matter when, at whatever moment, if she were asked what she was thinking about she could reply quite correctly – one thing, her happiness and her unhappiness.”

— Leo Tolstoy

489. “I wanted to run after him, but remembered that it is ridiculous to run after one’s wife’s lover in one’s socks; and I did not wish to be ridiculous but terrible.”

— Leo Tolstoy

490. “In the spiritual realm nothing is indifferent: what is not useful is harmful.”

— Leo Tolstoy

491. “The teaching of the church, theoretically astute, is a lie in practice and a compound of vulgar superstitions and sorcery.”

— Leo Tolstoy

492. “In all human sorrow nothing gives comfort but love and faith, and that in the sight of Christ’s compassion for us no sorrow is trifiling.”

— Leo Tolstoy

493. “But men are now united in states; that work is done; why now maintain exclusive devotion to one’s own state, when this produces terrible evils for all.”

— Leo Tolstoy

494. “In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive.”

— Leo Tolstoy

495. “We acknowledge God only when we are conscious of His manifestation in us.”

— Leo Tolstoy

496. “There are many faiths, but the spirit is one, in me, in you, and in every man.”

— Leo Tolstoy

497. “Today, nobody sees, or wishes to see, that in our time the enslavement of the majority of men is based on money taxes, levied on land and otherwise, which are collected by government from the subjects.”

— Leo Tolstoy

498. “Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn.”

— Leo Tolstoy

499. “In Varenka, she realized that one has but to forget oneself and love others, and one will be calm, happy, and noble.”

— Leo Tolstoy

500. “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.”

— Leo Tolstoy