Leo Tolstoy

Find the best quotes, maxims and aphorisms of Leo Tolstoy

Biography : Russian writer.
Born: 1828 - Died: 1910
Period:
20th century
19th century
Place of birth: Russian Federation

Russian Federation

Leo Tolstoy - Quotes

All the diversity, all the charm, all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.
Leo Tolstoy /

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Leo Tolstoy /

Human wisdom consists in a knowledge of the order in which it is profitable to know things;
Leo Tolstoy /

Human wisdom consists in a knowledge of the order in which it is profitable to know things;

There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.
Leo Tolstoy /

Truth must gain ground without violence.
Leo Tolstoy /

truth

If you want to be happy, be.
Leo Tolstoy /

happiness

Of all the sciences needful for men, the chief one is the knowledge of how to live, doing as little harm as possible; and of all arts, the most important is that which teaches how to avoid evil, and how to produce good with the least violence.
Leo Tolstoy /

Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.
Leo Tolstoy

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.
Leo Tolstoy

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

War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.
Leo Tolstoy

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.
Leo Tolstoy

art

Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.
Leo Tolstoy

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.
Leo Tolstoy

Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
Leo Tolstoy

Music is the shorthand of emotion.
Leo Tolstoy

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.
Leo Tolstoy

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

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
Leo Tolstoy

If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.
Leo Tolstoy

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

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.
Leo Tolstoy

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

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.
Leo Tolstoy

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
Leo Tolstoy

beauty

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.
Leo Tolstoy

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

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.
Leo Tolstoy

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.
Leo Tolstoy

One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.
Leo Tolstoy