Top 500 Leo Tolstoy Quotes (2023 Update)
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351. “Prayer is an invisible tool which is wielded in a visible world.”

— Leo Tolstoy

352. “I have discovered nothing new; I have only perceived what I already knew.”

— Leo Tolstoy

353. “So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and for what purpose he had been placed in the word.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

355. “There are always so many conjectures as to the issue of any event that, whatever the outcome, there will always be people to say: ‘I said then that it would be so’”

— Leo Tolstoy

356. “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

357. “Power is the relation of a given person to other persons, in which the more this person expresses opinions, theories and justifications of the collective action the less is his participation in that action.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

359. “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

360. “We are all created to be miserable, and that we all know it, and all invent means of deceiving each other. And when one sees the truth, what is one to do?”

— Leo Tolstoy

361. “He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.”

— Leo Tolstoy

362. “He who has a mistaken idea of life, will always have a mistaken idea of death.”

— Leo Tolstoy

363. “There is no significant idea which cannot be explained to an intelligent twelve year old boy in fifteen minutes.”

— Leo Tolstoy

364. “Power, from the standpoint of experience, is merely the relation that exists between the expression of someone’s will and the execution of that will by others.”

— Leo Tolstoy

365. “And yet, now that years have passed, I recall it and wonder that it could distress me so much. It will be the same thing, too, with this trouble. Time will go by and I shall not mind about this either.”

— Leo Tolstoy

366. “Her face was brilliant and glowing; but this glow was not one of brightness; it suggested the fearful glow of a conflagration in the midst of a dark night.”

— Leo Tolstoy

367. “There can be no peace for us, only misery, and the greatest happiness.”

— Leo Tolstoy

368. “I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.”

— Leo Tolstoy

369. “But our idea is that the wolves should be fed and the sheep kept safe.”

— Leo Tolstoy

370. “Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid.”

— Leo Tolstoy

371. “Governments not only are not necessary, but are harmful and most highly immoral institutions.”

— Leo Tolstoy

372. “Woman is more impressionable than man. Therefore in the Golden Age they were better than men. Now they are worse.”

— Leo Tolstoy

373. “Love those you hate you.”

— Leo Tolstoy

374. “The difference between real material poison and intellectual poison is that most material poison is disgusting to the taste, but intellectual poison, which takes the form of cheap newspapers or bad books, can unfortunately sometimes be attractive.”

— Leo Tolstoy

375. “Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.”

— Leo Tolstoy

376. “He remembered his mother’s love for him, and his family’s, and his friends’, and the enemy’s intention to kill him seemed impossible.”

— Leo Tolstoy

377. “Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered.”

— Leo Tolstoy

378. “By patriotism is meant, not only spontaneous, instinctive love for one’s own nation, and preference for it above all other nations, but also the belief that such love and preference are good and useful.”

— Leo Tolstoy

379. “But the peasants – how do the peasants die?”

— Leo Tolstoy

380. “Life did not stop, and one had to live.”

— Leo Tolstoy

381. “Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.”

— Leo Tolstoy

382. “If there are as many minds as there are men, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.”

— Leo Tolstoy

383. “After the doctor’s departure Koznyshev felt inclined to go to the river with his fishing rod. He was fond of angling, and seemed proud of being able to like such a stupid occupation.”

— Leo Tolstoy

384. “In life, in true life, there can be nothing better than what is. Wanting something different than what is, is blasphemy.”

— Leo Tolstoy

385. “Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.”

— Leo Tolstoy

386. “To get rid of an enemy one must love him.”

— Leo Tolstoy

387. “We walked to meet each other up at the time of our love and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions, and there’s no altering that.”

— Leo Tolstoy

388. “Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of people – that’s in your hands.”

— Leo Tolstoy

389. “I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

391. “And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

393. “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

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

— Leo Tolstoy

395. “I’m like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he’s cold, and his clothes are torn, and he’s ashamed, but he’s not unhappy.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

397. “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

398. “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

399. “Progress consists only in the greater clarification of answers to the basic questions of life.”

— Leo Tolstoy

400. “In order to obtain and hold power, a man must love it.”

— Leo Tolstoy