Top 500 Leo Tolstoy Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “Smiling with pleasure, they went through their memories, not sad, old people’s memories, but poetic, youthful ones, those impressions from the very distant past where dream merges with reality, and they laughed softly, rejoicing at something.”

— Leo Tolstoy

302. “The business of art lies just in this, – to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible.”

— Leo Tolstoy

303. “The most important of all sciences man can and must learn is the science of living so as to do the least evil and the greatest possible good.”

— Leo Tolstoy

304. “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.”

— Leo Tolstoy

305. “Christianity in its true sense puts an end to the State. It was so understood from its very beginning, and for that Christ was crucified.”

— Leo Tolstoy

306. “The one who is happy, that’s the one who is right.”

— Leo Tolstoy

307. “The idea of beauty is the fundamental idea of everything. In the world we see only distortions of the fundamental idea, but art, by imagination, may lift itself to the height of this idea. Art is therefore akin to creation.”

— Leo Tolstoy

308. “The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby justifies, in a way, all similar actions that lie outside those limits.”

— Leo Tolstoy

309. “Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the state, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment, its wars.”

— Leo Tolstoy

310. “Don’t seek God in temples. He is close to you. He is within you. Only you should surrender to Him and you will rise above happiness and unhappiness.”

— Leo Tolstoy

311. “No one is satisfied with his position, but every one is satisfied with his wit.”

— Leo Tolstoy

312. “Muhammad has always been standing higher than the Christianity. He does not consider god as a human being and never makes himself equal to God. Muslims worship nothing except God and Muhammad is his Messenger. There is no any mystery and secret in it.”

— Leo Tolstoy

313. “The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.”

— Leo Tolstoy

314. “Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it.”

— Leo Tolstoy

315. “I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do. But if even that cannot be, command me to disappear, and I disappear. You shall not see me if my presence is distasteful to you.”

— Leo Tolstoy

316. “A monkey was carrying two handfuls of peas. One little pea dropped out. He tried to pick it up, and split twenty. He tried to pick up the twenty, and split them all. Then he lost his temper, scattered the peas in all directions and ran away.”

— Leo Tolstoy

317. “They’ve got no idea what happiness is, they don’t know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us – there is no life.”

— Leo Tolstoy

318. “The soul is immortal- well then, if I shall always live, I must have lived before, lived for a whole eternity.”

— Leo Tolstoy

319. “The example of a syllogism that he had studied in Kiesewetter’s logic: Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal, had throughout his whole life seemed to him right only in relation to Caius, but not to him at all.”

— Leo Tolstoy

320. “If it were not so frightening it would be amusing to observe the pride and complacency with which we, like children, take apart the watch, pull out the spring and make a toy of it, and are then surprised when the watch stops working.”

— Leo Tolstoy

321. “You will die and it will all be over. You will die and find out everything or cease asking.”

— Leo Tolstoy

322. “I often think how unfairly life’s good fortune is sometimes distributed.”

— Leo Tolstoy

323. “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.”

— Leo Tolstoy

324. “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.”

— Leo Tolstoy

325. “Always the same. Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair rages, and always pain; always pain, always despair, and always the same.”

— Leo Tolstoy

326. “A Christian cannot help being free, because in the pursuit and attainment of his object, no one can either hinder or retard him.”

— Leo Tolstoy

327. “The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

329. “I now understand that my welfare is only possible if I acknowledge my unity with all the people of the world without exception.”

— Leo Tolstoy

330. “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.”

— Leo Tolstoy

331. “I am sure that nothing has such a decisive influence upon a man’s course as his personal appearance, and not so much his appearance as his belief in its attractiveness or unattractiveness.”

— Leo Tolstoy

332. “The great tragedy of atheists is that they walk through this world and have no one to thank.”

— Leo Tolstoy

333. “The struggle with evil by means of violence is the same as an attempt to stop a cloud, in order that there may be no rain.”

— Leo Tolstoy

334. “Art begins when a man, with a purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs.”

— Leo Tolstoy

335. “These joys were so trifling as to be as imperceptible as grains of gold among the sand, and in moments of depression she saw nothing but the sand; yet there were brighter moments when she felt nothing but joy, saw nothing but the gold.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

337. “You can’t imagine what a pleasure this complete laziness is to me: not a thought in my brain- you might send a ball rolling through it!”

— Leo Tolstoy

338. “Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.”

— Leo Tolstoy

339. “The true meaning of Christ’s teaching consists in the recognition of love as the supreme law of life, and therefore not admitting any exceptions.”

— Leo Tolstoy

340. “He liked fishing and seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation.”

— Leo Tolstoy

341. “There is nothing more harmful to you than improving only your material, animal side of life. There is nothing more beneficial, both for you and for others, than activity directed to the improvement of your soul.”

— Leo Tolstoy

342. “Life consists in penetrating the unknown, and fashioning our actions in accord with the new knowledge thus acquired.”

— Leo Tolstoy

343. “People of limited intelligence are fond of talking about “these days,” imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of “these days” and that human nature changes with the times.”

— Leo Tolstoy

344. “If a man does not work at necessary and good things, then he will work at unnecessary and stupid things.”

— Leo Tolstoy

345. “He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. “Where is it? What death?” There was no fear because there was no death. In place of death there was light.”

— Leo Tolstoy

346. “Where is there any book of the law so clear to each man as that written in his heart?”

— Leo Tolstoy

347. “If you no longer believe in the God in whom you believed in before, this comes from the fact that there was something wrong with your belief, and you must strive to understand better that which you call God.”

— Leo Tolstoy

348. “The idea shared by many that life is a vale of tears is just as false as the idea shared by the great majority, the idea to which youth and health and riches incline you, that life is a place of entertainment.”

— Leo Tolstoy

349. “I don’t allow myself to doubt myself even for a moment.”

— Leo Tolstoy

350. “The life of our class, of the wealthy and the learned, was not only repulsive to me but had lost all meaning. The sum of our action and thinking, of our science and art, all of it struck me as the overindulgences of a spoiled child.”

— Leo Tolstoy