Leo Tolstoy: Trending quotes

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“Hell is the inability to love.”

Leo Tolstoy

“No longer able to believe in the Church religion, whose falsehood they had detected, and incapable of accepting true Christian teaching, which denounced their whole manner of life, these rich and powerful people, stranded without any religious conception of life, involuntarily returned to that pagan view of things which places life's meaning in personal enjoyment.”

Leo Tolstoy

What is Art? (1897)
Context: No longer able to believe in the Church religion, whose falsehood they had detected, and incapable of accepting true Christian teaching, which denounced their whole manner of life, these rich and powerful people, stranded without any religious conception of life, involuntarily returned to that pagan view of things which places life's meaning in personal enjoyment. And then among the upper classes what is called the "Renaissance of science and art" took place, which was really not only a denial of every religion, but also an assertion that religion was unnecessary.

“everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait… there is nothing stronger than these two: patience and time, they will do it all.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“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.”

Leo Tolstoy

Sevastopol in May (1855), Ch. 16

“Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Thoughts of Prince Andrew Bk XII, Ch. 16
War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869)

“In order to correctly define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and consider it as one of the conditions of human life. …Reflecting on it in this way, we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of affective communication between people.”

Leo Tolstoy

What is Art? (1897)

“There can be only one permanent revolution — a moral one; the regeneration of the inner man.
How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.”

Leo Tolstoy

"Three Methods Of Reform" in Pamphlets : Translated from the Russian (1900) as translated by Aylmer Maude, p. 29
As quoted in The Artist's Way at Work : Riding the Dragon (1999) by Mark A. Bryan with Julia Cameron and Catherine A. Allen, p. 160
Variant: Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

“Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Bk. X, ch. 16
War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869)

“The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens … Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere.”

Leo Tolstoy

As quoted in Tolstoy (1988) by A. N. Wilson, p. 146

“Further acquaintance with the labors of the Quakers and their works — with Fox, Penn, and especially the work of Dymond (published in 1827) — showed me not only that the impossibility of reconciling Christianity with force and war had been recognized long, long ago, but that this irreconcilability had been long ago proved so clearly and so indubitably that one could only wonder how this impossible reconciliation of Christian teaching with the use of force, which has been, and is still, preached in the churches, could have been maintained in spite of it.”

Leo Tolstoy

The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894)

“If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“The most mentally deranged people are certainly those who see in others indications of insanity they do not notice in themselves.”

Leo Tolstoy book The Devil

Source: The Devil

“No one has yet added up all the heavy, stress-filled workdays as well as the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives that are wasted to produce the world’s amusements. It is for this reason that “amusements” are not so amusing.”

Leo Tolstoy

Source: Path of Life (1909), p. 81

“And I understood that in man dwells Love! I was glad that God had already begun to show me what He had promised, and I smiled for the first time.”

Leo Tolstoy book What Men Live By

Source: What Men Live By (1881), Ch. XI
Context: Then I remembered the first lesson God had set me: "Learn what dwells in man." And I understood that in man dwells Love! I was glad that God had already begun to show me what He had promised, and I smiled for the first time.

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”

Leo Tolstoy

“To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved sufferings.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Bk. XIV, ch. 15
War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869)

“The Most difficult thing but an essential one – is to love Life, to love it even while one suffers, because Life is all, Life is God, and to love Life means to love God.”

Leo Tolstoy