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 Mahātma Gāndhī, 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

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

If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.
—Leo Tolstoy

A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it.
—Leo Tolstoy

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

A Gentleman is a man who will pay his gambling debts even when he knows he has been cheated.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Gambling

I am always with myself and it is I who am my tormentor.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Self-Control, Control

If a man earnestly seeks a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from animal food.
—Leo Tolstoy

Some mathematician has said pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in seeking it.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Pleasure

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

Music is the shorthand of emotion.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Emotions, Music

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

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

I know that my unity with all people cannot be destroyed by national boundaries and government orders.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Unity

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

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

Remember then: there is only one time that is important—Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: The Present

It is terrible when people do not know God, but it is worse when people identify as God what is not God.
—Leo Tolstoy

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

Patriotism is a survival from barbarous times which must not only be evoked and educated but which must be eradicated by all means – by preaching, persuasion, contempt and ridicule.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Patriotism

There are no conditions to which a man cannot become accustomed.
—Leo Tolstoy

A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally both in mind and body as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world and therefore, as an Englishman, always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The German’s self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth—science—which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Apathy

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

I am sure that nothing has such a decisive influence upon a man’s course as his personal appearance, and not so much his appearance as his belief in its attractiveness or unattractiveness.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Attitude

But the peasants—how do the peasants die?
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Dying, Death

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.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Peace

Kindness enriches our life; with kindness mysterious things become clear, difficult things become easy, and dull things become cheerful.
—Leo Tolstoy

Man is meant for happiness and this happiness is in him, in the satisfaction of the daily needs of his existence.
—Leo Tolstoy
Topics: Happiness

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

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

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

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