Leo Tolstoy quotes - page 17

'BUT science and art! You are denying science and art: that is you are denying that by which humanity lives.' People constantly make this rejoinder to me, and they employ: this method in order to reject my arguments without examination. 'He rejects science and art, he wishes man to revert to a state of savagery - why listen to him or discuss with him?' But this is unjust. Not only do I not repudiate science, that is, the reasonable activity of humanity, and art - the expression of that reasonable activity - but it is just on behalf of that reasonable activity and its expression that I speak, only that It may be possible for mankind to escape from the savage state into which it is rapidly lapsing thanks to the false teaching of our time. It is only on that account that I speak as I do. (Leo Tolstoy)
The Christian churches and Christianity have nothing in common save in name they are utterly hostile opposites. The churches are arrogance, violence, usurpation, rigidity, death Christianity is humility, penitence, submissiveness, progress, life. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
If you want to improve your soul, you should be ready to sacrifice it. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
And I understood that in man dwells Love! I was glad that God had already begun to show me what He had promised, and I smiled for the first time. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
You think that your laws correct evil - they only increase it. There is but one way to end evil - by rendering good for evil to all men without distinction. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
He, like all people who live with nature and know want, was patient and could wait calmly for hours, even days, without feeling either alarm or vexation. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
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. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
The good is the everlasting, the pinnacle of our life. ... life is striving towards the good, toward God. The good is the most basic idea ... an idea not definable by reason ... yet is the postulate from which all else follows. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
Hell is the inability to love. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
God is the infinite ALL. Man is only a finite manifestation of Him. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
No longer able to believe in the Church religion, whose falsehood they had detected, and incapable of accepting true Christian teaching, which denounced their whole manner of life, these rich and powerful people, stranded without any religious conception of life, involuntarily returned to that pagan view of things which places life's meaning in personal enjoyment. (Leo Tolstoy)
All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it is not what was asked. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
The recognition that love represents the highest morality was nowhere denied or contradicted, but this truth was so interwoven everywhere with all kinds of falsehoods which distorted it, that finally nothing of it remained but words. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
There is only one significance, you are a worker. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
But just what this good patriotism is, no one explains. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
The inherent contradiction of human life has now reached an extreme degree of tension. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
I looked up, and did not recognize the same man: before, I had seen death in his face; but now he was alive, and I recognized in him the presence of God. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
Religions are the exponents of the highest comprehension of life ... within a given age in a given society ... a basis for evaluating human sentiments. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
No feats of heroism are needed to achieve the greatest and most important changes in the existence of humanity. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
When I started life Hegelianism was the basis of everything: it was in the air, found expression in magazine and newspaper articles, in novels and essays, in art, in histories, in sermons, and in conversation. A man unacquainted with Hegel had no right to speak: he who wished to know the truth studied Hegel. (Leo Tolstoy)
The hatred and contempt of the oppressed people are increasing, and the physical and moral strength of the richer classes are decreasing: the deceit which supports all this is wearing out, and the rich classes have nothing wherewith to comfort themselves. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
You will die and find out everything - or cease asking. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
I have learnt that all men live not by care for themselves, but by love. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
Spiritual beauty or the good, generally not only does not coincide with the typical meaning of beauty, it is its opposite. View quote
Leo Tolstoy