Leo Tolstoy Quotes.
All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.
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.
If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one’s reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state.
In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.
Rest, nature, books, music…such is my idea of happiness.
When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.
In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
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.
Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.
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.
Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.
Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.
Once we’re thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost, but it’s only here that the new and the good begins.
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.
Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
I have to create a circle of reading for myself: Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal, The New Testament. This is also necessary for all people.
Music is the shorthand of emotion.
Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.
Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know.
True life is lived when tiny changes occur.
The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.
Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.
Since corrupt people unite amongst themselves to constitute a force, then honest people must do the same.
If you want to be happy, be.
The more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life.
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can’t eat it.
Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.
War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it.
Debates conceal rather than reveal the truth. Truth is revealed in solitude.
Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking.
He never chooses an opinion; he just wears whatever happens to be in style.
Upon meeting, you’re judged by your clothes, upon parting you’re judged by your wits.
We lost because we told ourselves we lost.
The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.
Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.
Until you do what you believe in, you don’t know whether you believe it or not.
Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow – that is patience. The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.
If you want to be happy, try only to please God, not people.
Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live.
All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.
Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
If you make it a habit not to blame others, you will feel the growth of the ability to love in your soul, and you will see the growth of goodness in your life.
Each person’s task in life is to become an increasingly better person.
To sin is a human business, to justify sins is a devilish business.
Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself.
Much unhappiness has come from things left unsaid
The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.
Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.
When ignorance does not know something, it says that what it does not know is stupid.
Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.
The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby justifies, in a way, all similar actions that lie outside those limits.
