Quotes By Leo Tolstoy

Life did not stop, and one had to live.

Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal - that there is no human relation between master and slave.

There can be only one permanent revolution- a moral one: the regeneration of the inner man.

The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the Kingdom of God; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgement and profession of the truth by each one of us.

History would be an excellent thing if only it were true.

Everything depends on upbringing.

I have found that a story leaves a deeper impression when it is impossible to tell which side the author is on.

The Christian churches and Christianity have nothing in common save in name: they are utterly hostile opposites. The churches are arrogance, violence, usurpation, rigidity, death; Christianity is humility, penitence, submissiveness, progress, life.

Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair rages, and always pain; always pain, always despair, and always the same.

Wealth brings a heavy purse; poverty, a light spirit.

Life could be limitless joy, if we would only take it for what it is, in the way it is given to us.

When the suffering of another creature causes you to feel pain, do not submit to the initial desire to flee from the suffering one, but on the contrary, come closer, as close as you can to her who suffers, and try to help her.

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.

Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.

The highest wisdom has but one science - the science of the whole - the science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it.

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

Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective, of nature with reason, of the unconscious with the conscious, and therefore art is the highest means of knowledge.

Darkness had fallen upon everything for him; but just because of this darkness he felt that the one guiding clue in the darkness was his work, and he clutched it and clung to it with all his strength.

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.

Effort is not a means to lead us to happiness. Effort itself is happiness.