Top 500 Leo Tolstoy Quotes (2023 Update)
Page 9 of 10

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

— Leo Tolstoy

402. “One must be cunning and wicked in this world.”

— Leo Tolstoy

403. “Whenever my life came to a halt, the questions would arise: Why? And what next?”

— Leo Tolstoy

404. “Something magical has happened to me: like a dream when one feels frightened and creepy, and suddenly wakes up to the knowledge that no such terrors exist. I have wakened up.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

406. “One of the most obtuse superstitions is the superstition of the scientists who say that man can exist without faith.”

— Leo Tolstoy

407. “I often think that men don’t understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.”

— Leo Tolstoy

408. “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

409. “Then he thought himself unhappy, but happiness was all in the future; now he felt that the best happiness was already in the past.”

— Leo Tolstoy

410. “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

411. “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

412. “I must have physical exercise, or my temper’ll certainly be ruined.”

— Leo Tolstoy

413. “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

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

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

416. “Children: a torment and nothing more.”

— Leo Tolstoy

417. “I felt a wish never to leave that room – a wish that dawn might never come, that my present frame of mind might never change.”

— Leo Tolstoy

418. “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

419. “The appreciation of the merits of art of the emotions it conveys depends upon an understanding of the meaning of life...”

— Leo Tolstoy

420. “Man’s mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but the desire to find the causes is implanted in man’s soul.”

— Leo Tolstoy

421. “Those whom God wishes to destroy he drives mad.”

— Leo Tolstoy

422. “At moments of departure and a change of life, people capable of reflecting on their actions usually get into a serious state of mind. At these moments they usually take stock of the past and make plans for the future.”

— Leo Tolstoy

423. “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

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

— Leo Tolstoy

425. “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

426. “He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes like those in the world. There was only one creature in the world who could concentrate for him all the brightness and meaning of life. It was she. It was Kitty.”

— Leo Tolstoy

427. “The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed in two ways: by a change of life or by a change of conscience.”

— Leo Tolstoy

428. “And whatever people might say about the time having come when young people must arrange their future for themselves, she could not believe it any more than she could believe that loaded pistols could ever be the best toys for five-year-old children.”

— Leo Tolstoy

429. “I say that the God who created the world in six days and who sent His son, and also his son himself, are not God, but that God is the one existing, incomparable good, the beginning of everything.”

— Leo Tolstoy

430. “Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she would not be happy.”

— Leo Tolstoy

431. “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

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

— Leo Tolstoy

433. “Man must not check reason by tradition, but contrariwise, must check tradition by reason.”

— Leo Tolstoy

434. “Art should cause violence to be set aside and it is only art that can accomplish this.”

— Leo Tolstoy

435. “The higher a man’s conception of God, the better will he know Him. And the better he knows God, the nearer will he draw to Him.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

437. “Energy rests upon love; and come as it will, there’s no forcing it.”

— Leo Tolstoy

438. “If once we admit, be it for a single hour or in a single instance, that there can be anything more important than compassion for a fellow human being, then there is no crime against man that we cannot commit with an easy conscience.”

— Leo Tolstoy

439. “I do value my work awfully; but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have something great – ideas, work – it’s all dust and ashes.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

441. “The only happy marriages I know are arranged ones.”

— Leo Tolstoy

442. “Ah, if everyone was as sensitive as you! There’s no girl who hasn’t gone through that. And it’s all so unimportant!”

— Leo Tolstoy

443. “Only greatly insolent people establish a religious law which is to be taken for granted by others, which should be accepted by everyone on faith, without any discussion or doubts. Why must people do this?”

— Leo Tolstoy

444. “Teach French and unteach sincerity.”

— Leo Tolstoy

445. “When one’s head is gone one doesn’t weep over one’s hair!”

— Leo Tolstoy

446. “She did not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could not talk of outside matters.”

— Leo Tolstoy

447. “The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God.”

— Leo Tolstoy

448. “Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man’s life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible.”

— Leo Tolstoy

449. “Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?”

— Leo Tolstoy

450. “A human can be healthy without killing animals for food.”

— Leo Tolstoy