Leo Tolstoy: Trending quotes

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“The true meaning of Christ's teaching consists in the recognition of love as the supreme law of life, and therefore not admitting any exceptions.”

Leo Tolstoy

“I wanted to run after him, but remembered that it is ridiculous to run after one's wife's lover in one's socks; and I did not wish to be ridiculous but terrible.”

Leo Tolstoy book The Kreutzer Sonata

Source: The Kreutzer Sonata

“With friends, one is well; but at home, one is better.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the achievement of historical, universally human goals.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“either you are so underdeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or you won't sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it…”

Leo Tolstoy

“Life is fragile and absurd.”

Leo Tolstoy

“And he has to live like this on the edge of destruction, alone, with nobody at all to understand or pity him”

Leo Tolstoy

Source: The Death of Ivan Ilych

“… for nightinggales - we know - can’t live on fairytales.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“Then he thought himself unhappy, but happiness was all in the future; now he felt that the best happiness was already in the past.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“You conquer me.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina

“The assertion that art may be good art and at the same time incomprehensible to a great number of people is extremely unjust, and its consequences are ruinous to art itself…it is the same as saying some kind of food is good but most people can't eat it.”

Leo Tolstoy

What is Art? (1897)

““If you want him defined, here he is: a prime, well-fed beast such as takes medals at the cattle shows, and nothing more,” he said, with a tone of vexation that interested her.
“No; how so?” she replied. “He's seen a great deal, anyway; he's cultured?”
“It's an utterly different culture—their culture. He's cultivated, one sees, simply to be able to despise culture, as they despise everything but animal pleasures.””

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Vronky and Anna discussing the visiting Prince, Part 4, Chapter 3
Anna Karenina (1875–1877; 1878)

“It will be said, "Patriotism has welded mankind into states, and maintains the unity of states." But men are now united in states; that work is done; why now maintain exclusive devotion to one's own state, when this produces terrible evils for all states and nations? For this same patriotism which welded mankind into states is now destroying those same states. If there were but one patriotism say of the English only then it were possible to regard that as conciliatory, or beneficent. But when, as now, there is American patriotism, English, German, French, Russian, all opposed to one another, in this event, patriotism no longer unites, but disunites.”

Leo Tolstoy book Patriotism and Government

Patriotism and Government

“The activity of art is… as important as the activity of language itself, and as universal.”

Leo Tolstoy

What is Art? (1897)