Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it.

One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.

Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself.

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

All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.

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.

All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people cant eat it.

The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.

There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live.

Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.

An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a persons main task in life - becoming a better person.

If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to ones reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state.

The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.

“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”