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
Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Humanity
In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Government
The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Humanity, Meaning
The kinder and the more thoughtful a person is, the more kindness he can find in other people.
—Leo Tolstoy
The strongest of all warriors are these two—Time and Patience.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Patience, Difficulty
If you want to be happy, be.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Happiness
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 one’s reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Hypocrisy
Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself.
—Leo 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 Tolstoy
Topics: Reading
The sobs and tears of joy he had not foreseen rose with such force within him that his whole body shook and for a long time prevented him from speaking. Falling on his knees by her bed. He held his wife’s hand to his lips and kissed it, and her hand responded to his kisses with weak movement of finger. Meanwhile, at the foot of the bed, in the midwife’s expert hands, like the flame of a lamp, flickered the life of a human being who had never existed before…
—Leo Tolstoy
Joy can be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Service
I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means—except by getting off his back.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Liberalism
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
There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are absent.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Greatness & Great Things, Simplicity
Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Vengeance
I am used to praying when I am alone, thank God. But when I come together with other people, when I need more than ever to pray, I still cannot get used to it.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Prayer
Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Feelings
The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all its beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Truth
Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man’s life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Writing
The teaching of the church, theoretically astute, is a lie in practice and a compound of vulgar superstitions and sorcery
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Teaching
A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it.
—Leo Tolstoy
The religious superstition is encouraged by means of the institution of churches, processions, monuments, festivities….The so-called clergy stupefy the masses….They befog the people and keep them in an eternal condition of stupefaction.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Religion
I am convinced that the teaching of the church is in theory a crafty and evil lie, and in practice a concoction of gross superstition and witchcraft
—Leo Tolstoy
It is terrible when people do not know God, but it is worse when people identify as God what is not God.
—Leo Tolstoy
Thou shall not kill does not apply to murder of one’s own kind only, but to all living beings; and this Commandment was inscribed in the human breast long before it was proclaimed from Sinai
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Vegetarianism
The idea shared by many that life is a vale of tears is just as false as the idea shared by the great majority, the idea to which youth and health and riches incline you, that life is a place of entertainment.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Life
Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the state, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment and its wars.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Christians, Christianity
Music is the shorthand of emotion.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Music, Emotions
One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one’s own flesh in the inkpot, each time one dips one’s pen.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Writing
The subject of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch and pin down in words—that is, to describe directly the life, not only of humanity, but even of a single people, appears to be impossible.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: History
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