Quotes By Leo Tolstoy

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Everything depends on upbringing.

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

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.

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

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.

Life did not stop, and one had to live.

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.

With one hand I take thousands of rubles from the poor, and with the other I hand back a few kopecks.

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.

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.

It is easier to produce ten volumes of philosophical writings than to put one principle into practice.