Top 500 Leo Tolstoy Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “Konstantin Levin did not like talking and hearing about the beauty of nature. Words for him took away the beauty of what he saw.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

303. “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

304. “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

305. “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

306. “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

307. “He looked at her as a man might look at a faded flower he had plucked, in which it was difficult for him to trace the beauty that had made him pick and so destroy it.”

— Leo Tolstoy

308. “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

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

— Leo Tolstoy

310. “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

311. “The purpose of life is to bring forth goodness. Now, in this life.”

— Leo Tolstoy

312. “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

313. “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

314. “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

315. “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

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

— Leo Tolstoy

317. “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

318. “Power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

321. “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

322. “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

323. “Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

325. “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

326. “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

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. “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

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. “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

331. “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

332. “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

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

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

335. “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

336. “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

337. “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

338. “The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

342. “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

343. “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

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

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

346. “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

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

— Leo Tolstoy

349. “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

350. “I think that when you remember, remember, remember everything like that, you could go on until you remember what was there before you were in the world.”

— Leo Tolstoy