Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828–1910,) usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian novelist and social reformer. He is the author of two of the greatest works of fiction ever written: War and Peace (1869,) an epic novel of the Napoleonic invasion and the lives of three aristocratic families, and Anna Karenina (1877,) the tale of a married woman’s passion for a young officer and her tragic fate.

Born into Russia’s nobility, Tolstoy was an excellent novelist with unsurpassed creative abilities. However, from 1880, Tolstoy’s constant concern with moral inquiries advanced into a spiritual crisis, which led to radical changes in his life. He abandoned his literary ambitions, believing them to be incompatible with his deepest convictions. He transformed himself into a prophetic philosopher who tried to follow a comprehensive vision of primitive Christian austerity. He lived in great simplicity, renouncing property and the happiness of family life, engaging in manual labor, and striving for the relief of social distress during the Russian famine of 1891–92.

All of Tolstoy’s later works were on moral and religious subjects, and his output was substantial. His writings on the virtues of nonviolent resistance, spirituality, and anarchism got him excommunicated from the Orthodox Church, and he then started writing against organized religion. He was a significant influence in the developments of Christian anarchism, nonviolent resistance movements such as those of as Mohandas K. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Bevel.

The foremost fictional works bearing the imprint of changes in Tolstoy’s philosophy are The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886,) The Kreutzer Sonata (1891,) Master and Man (1895,) Resurrection (1899,) and Hadji Murad (1904.)

Tolstoy is also the author of numerous stories for children. His collections of folk tales for peasant children were simple in structure and style and contained clear morals. His most famous fairy tale, “The Three Bears,” is an adaptation of the fairy tale “Goldilocks.” He opened several schools for the education of peasants but quickly closed them down after harassment by the secret police.

Tolstoy declined the first Nobel Prize in Literature concerned that the prize money would corrupt him and unjustifiably complicate his life.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Leo Tolstoy

Conceit is incompatible with understanding.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Vanity, Conceit

The difference between real material poison and intellectual poison is that most material poison is disgusting to the taste, but intellectual poison, which takes the form of cheap newspapers or bad books, can unfortunately sometimes be attractive.
—Leo Tolstoy

The recognition of the sanctity of the life of every man is the first and only basis of all morality.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Ethics

You should respond with kindness toward evil done to you, and you will destroy in an evil person that pleasure which he derives from evil.
—Leo 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 Tolstoy
Topics: Writing, Authors & Writing, Writers

He who has a mistaken idea of life, will always have a mistaken idea of death.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Death

We lost because we told ourselves we lost.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Attitude

Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Humanity

What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Marriage

History would be an excellent thing if only it were true.
—Leo Tolstoy

There are two different states of human existence: first, to live without thinking of death; second, to live with the thought that you approach death with every hour of your life.
—Leo Tolstoy

The teaching of the church, theoretically astute, is a lie in practice and a compound of vulgar superstitions and sorcery
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Teaching

The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God.
—Leo Tolstoy

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Humanity, Meaning

Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Sorrow

There is only one time that is important—NOW! It is the most important time because it is the only time that we have any power.
—Leo 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 to the region of emotion.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Science

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Government

He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Love

The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby justifies, in a way, all similar actions that lie outside those limits.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Justice

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Growth, Truth, Gold

It is easier to produce ten volumes of philosophical writing than to put one principle into practice
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Principles

Though it is possible to utter words only with the intention to fulfill the will of God, it is very difficult not to think about the impression which they will produce on men and not to form them accordingly. But deeds you can do quite unknown to men, only for God. And such deeds are the greatest joy that a man can experience.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Good Deeds, Goodness, Deeds

Patriotism in its simplest, clearest and most indubitable signification is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason, conscience, and a slavish enthrallment to those in power.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Patriotism

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
—Leo Tolstoy

Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Vengeance

If you want to be happy, be.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Happiness

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Goodness

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Truth

The best generals I have known were… stupid or absent-minded men. Not only does a good army commander not need any special qualities, on the contrary he needs the absence of the highest and best human attributes—love, poetry, tenderness, and philosophic inquiring doubt. He should be limited, firmly convinced that what he is doing is very important (otherwise he will not have sufficient patience), and only then will he be a brave leader. God forbid that he should be humane, should love, or pity, or think of what is just and unjust.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: The Military

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