Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.

If it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.

A human can 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.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Religious superstition consists in the belief that the sacrifices, often of human lives, made to the imaginary being are essential, and that men may and should be brought to that state of mind by all methods, not excluding violence.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Woman, you see, is an object of such a kind that study it as much as you will, it is always quite new.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

I know that my unity with all people cannot be destroyed by national boundaries and government orders.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

To sin is a human business, to justify sins is a devilish business.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Some mathematician has said pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in seeking it.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

In saying that without the power of the state, evil men would rule over the good. It is taken for granted that the good are precisely those who at the present time have power, and the bad the same who are no subjugated.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

One may say with one's lips: 'I believe that God is one, and also three'--but no one can believe it, because the words have no sense.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

A leader is the wave pushed ahead by the ship.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Was it by reason that I attained the knowledge that I must love my neighbour and not throttle him? They told me so when I was a child, and I gladly believed it, because they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason! Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

It is true, I deny the incomprehensible Trinity, and the fable regarding the fall of man, which is absurd in our day. It is true, I deny the sacrilegious story of a God born of a virgin to redeem the race.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

You see, if you take pains and learn in order to get a reward, the work will seem hard; but when you work... if you love your work, you will find your reward in that.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Without knowing why I am and why I am here, life is impossible.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

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

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

There is one evident, indubitable manifestation of the Divinity, and that is the laws of right which are made known to the world through Revelation.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy