The quotations of

Leo Tolstoy

Russian author

1828–1910

31 quotes, most often on Love, God and Morality.

One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud!
Confession (1882), Ch. 4
- Life & Death
People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing⁠—refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.
Path of Life (1909), p. 210
- Morality
I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.
What Men Live By (1881), Ch. XII
- God
- Love
In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.
Christianity and Patriotism (1895), as translated in The Novels and Other Works of Lyof N. Tolstoï, Vol. 20, p. 44
- Government
- War & Peace
God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part.
God alone exists truly. Man manifests Him in time, space and matter.
Entry in Tolstoy’s Diary (1 November 1910)
- God
Not only does the action of Governments not deter men from crimes; on the contrary, it increases crime by always disturbing and lowering the moral standard of society.
The Meaning of the Russian Revolution (1906), a work about the 1905 Russian Revolution.
- Government
- Morality
Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.
War and Peace (1869), Bk. XII, Ch. 16
- Life & Death
- Love
How good is it to remember one’s insignificance: that of a man among billions of men, of an animal amid billions of animals.
Last Diaries (1979) edited by Leon Stilman, p. 77
- Pride
By words one transmits thoughts to another, by means of art, one transmits feelings.
What is Art? (1897)
- Art
- Emotion
All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Anna Karenina (1875–1877; 1878), Pt. I, ch. 1
- Family
- Happiness
Humanity unceasingly strives forward from a lower, more partial and obscure understanding of life to one more general and more lucid.
What is Art? (1897)
- Wisdom
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.
Sevastopol in May (1855), Ch. 16
- Truth & Lies
- Writing
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Anna Karenina (1878), Part One, Chapter 1In context
- Family
- Happiness
It showed him the mistake men make in picturing to themselves happiness as the realization of their desires.
Anna Karenina (1878), Part Five, Chapter 8In context
- Happiness
Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.
Anna Karenina (1878), Part Seven, Chapter 24In context
- Love

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