Quotes By Leo Tolstoy

Wealth is a great sin in the eyes of God. Poverty is a great sin in the eyes of man.

To get rid of an enemy one must love him.

If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.

War is not courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that, and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game.

What time can be more beautiful when the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute the sole motives of your life.

The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.

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.

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.

Power is the sum total of the wills of the mass, transfered by express or tactic agreement to rulers chosen by the masses.

Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.

It is within my power either to serve God or not to serve Him. Serving Him, I add to my own good and the good of the whole world. Not serving Him, I forfeit my own good and deprive the world of that good, which was in my power to create.

I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.

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

There will be today, there will be tomorrow, there will be always, and there was yesterday, and there was the day before.

Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: 'What shall we do and how shall we live?'

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

Every heart has its own skeletons.

If a man does not work at necessary and good things, then he will work at unnecessary and stupid things.

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.

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: onespiritual and internal, the other experimental and external.