Top 500 Leo Tolstoy Quotes (2023 Update)
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301. “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

302. “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

303. “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

304. “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

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

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

311. “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

312. “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

313. “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

314. “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

315. “If you love me as you say you do,? she whispered, ’make it so that I am at peace.”

— Leo Tolstoy

316. “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

317. “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

318. “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

319. “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

320. “There’s a way out of every situation.”

— Leo Tolstoy

321. “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

322. “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

323. “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

324. “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

325. “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

326. “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

327. “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

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

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

331. “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

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

— Leo Tolstoy

333. “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

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

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

336. “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

337. “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

338. “True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion.”

— Leo Tolstoy

339. “Our body is a machine for living.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

341. “In order to know what he is, a man must first know what the sum of this mysterious humanity is, a humanity made up of people who, like himself, do not understand what they are.”

— Leo Tolstoy

342. “We should show life neither as it is or as it ought to be, but only as we see it in our dreams.”

— Leo Tolstoy

343. “God gave the day, God gave the strength.”

— Leo Tolstoy

344. “But that’s just the aim of civilization – to make everything a source of enjoyment.”

— Leo Tolstoy

345. “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

346. “The ideas of the wise have been tested by centuries. Everything medium is lost and only original, deep and useful things are left.”

— Leo Tolstoy

347. “We shall all of us die, so why grudge a little trouble?”

— Leo Tolstoy

348. “Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart, as though it were a fresh wound he had only just received. But he was at home, and at home the very walls are a support.”

— Leo Tolstoy

349. “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

350. “The subject of history is the life of peoples and mankind.”

— Leo Tolstoy