Famous phrases by Lev Tolstoy, famous quotes and aphorisms related to this Russian writer who gained the belief that man was created for happiness and that the meaning of life is life itself.
Lev Tolstoy's aphorisms
- It is not possible to force the mind to analyze and understand what the heart does not want.
- The secret of happiness is not always to do what you want, but to always want what you do.
- The individual life of man consists in nothing more than his approach to death and the liberation of his spiritual essence from the body.
- I do not desire another life and I could not desire it, since I know only mine.
- A man can ignore having a religion, just as he can ignore having a heart, but without religion, as without a heart, man cannot exist.
- All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
- The more men believe that it is up to them to modify their own lives, the more this becomes possible.
- To live with honor one must pining, being troubled, fighting, making mistakes, starting over and throwing everything away, and again starting to fight and lose eternally. Calm is a cowardice of the soul.
- Telling the truth is very difficult and young people are rarely capable of it.
- Everyone thinks of changing the world, but nobody thinks of changing himself.
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- To save oneself, that is, not to be unhappy, not to suffer, one must forget about oneself. And the only way to forget yourself is to love.
- If the slaughterhouses had glass walls we would all be vegetarian.
- Even by the great thinkers who have left a system, the reader, to assimilate the substance of the writer, effortlessly undoes the system and takes the individual pieces, applying them to man.
- Men of genius are unable to study in their youth because they unconsciously feel that one must learn everything differently from how the mass learns it.
Anger choked him. And he felt an excruciating, intolerable pain. It is not possible for everyone to be forever condemned to this horror. He got up.
- The character of people is never revealed as clearly as in the game.
Quotes by Lev Tolstoy
- Beauty, joy only for joy, independent of good, is repugnant. I met her and threw her away. The good without beauty gives torment. Only the union of the two or, rather not the union, but beauty as a halo of good. It seems to me that this is close to the truth.
- A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is, and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The bigger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.
- It is impossible to imagine a man without free will in life.
- By believing in himself, man always exposes himself to people's judgment. Believing others, he always has the approval of those around him.
- Fatalism is indispensable in historical science to explain meaningless events.
- A man alone cannot do any harm. Evil arises from disunity between people.
- The purpose of human life is the use of all possible faculties for the multilateral development of the whole being.
- The slavery of women consists only in what men wish and honestly believe to use of her as an instrument of pleasure.
- Art is the highest manifestation of human power. It is given to a select few and elevates those who are elected to such a height as to make their heads spin, so much so that it is difficult not to lose your mind. In art, as in any struggle, there are heroes who dedicate everything to their mission and who die without achieving their goal.
- An ally must be guarded just like an enemy.
- There were moments when, under the domination of this fixed idea, I reached such a point of madness, that I quickly turned to look behind me, on the opposite side, in the hope of catching the void unexpectedly where I don't candle.
- Everything is more painful if you think about it.
- He had that good sense of mediocrity which made him understand what he should do.
- Science is only an imaginary knowledge of absolute truth.
- In reality, however, our life consists only of the awareness of the spiritual being enclosed within the boundaries of the body.
- Man directly received from God the only tool to know himself and his relationship with the universe: this tool is reason, and nothing else.
Phrases by Lev Tolstoy
- I wanted something to move, and not the quiet flow of life. I wanted emotions, dangers, and sacrifice for a feeling. In me there was like an excess of strength, which found no outlet in our peaceful life.
- Passions are not eradicated: everyone must be able to satisfy them within the limits of virtue.
- You can't be half good.
"This happiness is not for you," said a certain inner voice. - This happiness is for those who don't have what's in you.
- The law of men is like the weather vane of an old bell tower that varies and moves according to how the winds blow.
- To be happy, only one thing is needed: to love, and to love with self-sacrifice, to love everyone and everything, to spread the spider's web of love in all directions: whoever happens to be inside, that must be taken.
- Nothing is as necessary to a young man as the company of intelligent women.
- I have solved for myself the problem of the meaning of life, telling myself that it consists in increasing love in oneself and in the world.
- Conversations do not strengthen good relationships but, on the contrary, damage them. We need to speak as little as possible, especially with those we care about.
- There is only one way to be happy: to live for others.
- For the lackey the great man cannot exist, because the lackey has a concept of his own greatness.
- Autumn is about to end, the most beautiful season of the year.
- And there is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and justice.
- The more a man lives for the soul, the better he realizes his unity with all living creatures. You live for the body, and you will find yourself only among strangers; live for the soul, and the whole world will be familiar to you.
- Where the needle goes, the thread also goes.
- I am indebted to Stendhal more than anyone else. He taught me to understand war.
- There is no better man than the other, just as there is no place on a river deeper and cleaner than another place on another river. Man flows like a river.
