Top 500 Leo Tolstoy Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “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

352. “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

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

— Leo Tolstoy

354. “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

355. “To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.”

— Leo Tolstoy

356. “With friends, one is well; but at home, one is better.”

— Leo Tolstoy

357. “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

358. “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

359. “And the angel said – “I have learned that every man lives not through care of himself, but by love”...”

— Leo Tolstoy

360. “And not only the pride of intellect, but the stupidity of intellect. And, above all, the dishonesty, yes, the dishonesty of intellect. Yes, indeed, the dishonesty and trickery of intellect.”

— Leo Tolstoy

361. “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

362. “It may be suggested by some books that it is not a sin to kill an animal, but it is written in our own hearts – more clearly than in any book – that we should take pity on animals in the same way as we do on humans.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

364. “God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part.”

— Leo Tolstoy

365. “Do not resist the evil-doer and take no part in doing so, either in the violent deeds of the administration, in the law courts, the collection of taxes, or above all in soldiering, and no one in the world will be able to enslave you.”

— Leo Tolstoy

366. “To regard Christ as God, and to pray to him, are to my mind the greatest possible sacrilege.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

368. “I feel not only that I cannot disappear, as nothing disappears in the world, but that I will always be and have always been. I feel that, besides me, above me, spirits live, and that in this world there is truth.”

— Leo Tolstoy

369. “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

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

— Leo Tolstoy

371. “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

372. “People involve themselves in countless activities which they consider to be important, but they forget about one activity which is more important and necessary than any other, and which includes all other things: the improvement of their soul.”

— Leo Tolstoy

373. “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

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

— Leo Tolstoy

375. “War is not a polite recreation but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that and not play at war.”

— Leo Tolstoy

376. “He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.”

— Leo Tolstoy

377. “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

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

— Leo Tolstoy

379. “I can’t think of you and myself apart. You and I are the same to me.”

— Leo Tolstoy

380. “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

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

— Leo Tolstoy

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382. “The question of how things will settle down is the only important question...”

— Leo Tolstoy

383. “If religion is the establishing of a relationship between man and the universe, then morality is the explanation of those activities that automatically result when a person maintains a relationship to the universe.”

— Leo Tolstoy

384. “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

385. “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

386. “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

387. “The military world is characterized by the absence of freedom – in other words, a rigorous discipline-enforced inactivity, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery and drunkenness.”

— Leo Tolstoy

388. “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

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

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

391. “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

392. “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

393. “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

394. “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

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

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

397. “Giving alms is only a virtuous deed when you give money that you yourself worked to get.”

— Leo Tolstoy

398. “Good fiction doesn’t come out of the basic conflict of good versus bad. Instead, it comes out of a conflict between good and good.”

— Leo Tolstoy

399. “To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.”

— Leo Tolstoy

400. “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