Best 1018 quotes of Leo Tolstoy on MyQuotes

A Christian cannot help being free, because in the pursuit and attainment of his object, no one can either hinder or retard him.

Act as if you are, and you will become such.

A free thinker used to be a man who had been educated on ideas of religion, law, morality, and had arrived at free thought by virtue of his own struggle and toil; but now a new type of born freethinker has been appearing, who’ve never even heard that there have been laws of morality and religion, and that there are authorities, but who simply grow up with negative ideas about everything, that is savages.

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.

A Gentleman is a man who will pay his gambling debts even when he knows he has been cheated.

A good player who loses at chess is genuinely convinced hat he has lost because of a mistake, and he looks for this mistake in the beginning of his game, but forgets that there were also mistakes at ever step in the course of the game, that none of his moves was perfect. The mistake he pays attention to is conspicuous only because his opponent took advantage of it.

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

A holy spirit lives within you.

A human can be healthy without killing animals for food.

A leader is the wave pushed ahead by the ship.

All art has this characteristic-it unites people.

All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.

All governments are in equal measure good and evil. The best ideal is anarchy.

All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

All men's instincts, all their impulses in life, are efforts to increase their freedom. Wealth and poverty, health and disease, culture and ignorance, labor and leisure, repletion and hunger, virtue and vice, are all terms for greater or less degree of freedom.

All that day she had had the feeling that she was playing in the theatre with actors better than herself and that her poor playing spoiled the whole thing.

All the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class included all the girls in the world except her, and they had all the usual human feelings and were very ordinary girls; while the other class -herself alone- had no weaknesses and was superior to all humanity.

All the stories and descriptions of that time without exception peak only of the patriotism, self-sacrifice, despair, grief, and heroism of the Russians. But in reality it was not like that...The majority of the people paid no attention to the general course of events but were influenced only by their immediate personal interests.

All the true heroes of history will be forgotten and all the villains will be remembered as heroes.

All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.

All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.

All were happy - plants, birds, insects and children. But grown-up people - adult men and women - never left off cheating and tormenting themselves and one another. It was not this spring morning which they considered sacred and important, not the beauty of God's world, given to all creatures to enjoy - a beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony and to love.

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.

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.

A man can spend several hours sitting cross-legged in the same position if he knows that noting prevents him from changing it; but if he knows that he has to sit with his legs crossed like that, he will get cramps, his legs will twitch and strain towards where he would like to stretch them.

A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.

A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body.

Am I mad, to see what others do not see, or are they mad who are responsible for all that I am seeing?

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

An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life—becoming a better person.

And all these people lived not by reason of any care they had for themselves, but by the love for them that was in other people.

And for him, who lived in a certain circle, and who required some mental activity such as usually develops with maturity, having views was as necessary as having a hat.

And Levin, a happy father and a man in perfect health, was several times so near suicide that he hid the cord, lest he be tempted to hang himself, and was afraid to go out with his gun, for fear of shooting himself. But Levin did not shoot himself, and did not hang himself; he went on living.

And once he had seen this, he could never again see it otherwise, just as we cannot reconstruct an illusion once it has been explained.

And so he who looks down at his feet will not know the truth, but he who discerns by the sun which way to go.

And so the liberal tendency became a habit with Stepan Arkadyich, and he liked his newspaper, as he liked a cigar after dinner, for the slight haze it produced in his head.

And that which yesterday was the novel opinion of one man, to-day becomes the general opinion of the majority.

And the angel said - "I have learned that every man lives not through care of himself, but by love".

And the cause of everything is that which we call God.

And the light by which she had read the book filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and evil, flared up more brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that had been in darkness, flickered, began to grow dim, and was quenched forever.

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.

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.

And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.

A new conception of life cannot be imposed on men; it can only be freely assimilated. And it can only be freely assimilated in two ways: one spiritual and internal, the other experimental and external.

Anna smiled,as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love. . .

Anna spoke not only naturally and intelligently, but intelligently and casually, without attaching any value to her own thoughts, yet giving great value to the thoughts of the one she was talking to.

A person who has spoiled his stomach will criticize his meal saying that the food is bad; the same thing happens with people who are not satisfied with their lives

"A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist.

Are we not all flung into the world for no other purpose than to hate each other, and so to torture ourselves and one another?

Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings, and also experience them.