Leo Tolstoy

“Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.”

“To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.”

“Science has adapted itself entirely to the wealthy classes and accordingly has set itself to heal those who can afford everything, and it prescribes the same methods for those who have nothing to spare.”

“Science may fall back on its stupid excuse that science works for science, and that when it has been developed by the scientists it will become accessible to the people also; but art, if it be art, should be accessible to all, and particularly to those for whom it is produced. And the position of our art strikingly arraigns the producers of art for not wishing, not knowing how, and being unable, to serve the people.”

“Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.”

“Service of the people by sciences and arts will only exist when men live with the people and as the people live, and without presenting any claims will offer their scientific and artistic services, which the people will be free to accept or decline as they please.”

“A real mother, who knows the will of God by experience, will prepare her children also to fulfil it. Such a mother will suffer if she sees her child overfed, effeminate, and dressed-up, for she knows that these things will make it difficult for it to fulfil the will of God which she recognizes.”

“If one has no vanity in this life of ours, there is no sufficient reason for living.”

“If the slave-owner of our times has no slave, John, whom he can send to the cesspool, he has five shillings, of which hundreds of such Johns are in such need that the slave-owner of our times may choose any one out of hundreds of Johns and be a benefactor to him by giving him the preference, and allowing him, rather than another, to climb down into the cesspool.”

“To be good and lead a good life means to give to others more than one takes from them.”

“There is a scale of virtues, and it is necessary, if one would mount the higher steps, to begin with the lowest; and the first virtue a man must acquire if he wishes to acquire the others, is that which the ancients called ἐγκράτεια or σωφροσύνη — i.e., self-control or moderation.”

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”

“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.”

“If you want to be happy, be.”

“The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgment and profession of the truth by each one of us.”

“The Quakers sent me books, from which I learnt how they had, years ago, established beyond doubt the duty for a Christian of fulfilling the command of non-resistance to evil by force, and had exposed the error of the Church's teaching in allowing war and capital punishment.”

“The error arises from the learned jurists deceiving themselves and others, by asserting that government is not what it really is, one set of men banded together to oppress another set of men, but, as shown by science, is the representation of the citizens in their collective capacity.”

“Armies are necessary, before all things, for the defense of governments from their own oppressed and enslaved subjects.”

“We cannot pretend that we do not see the armed policeman who marches up and down beneath our window to guarantee our security while we eat our luxurious dinner, or look at the new piece at the theater, or that we are unaware of the existence of the soldiers who will make their appearance with guns and cartridges directly our property is attacked.”

“The revolutionaries say: "The government organization is bad in this and that respect; it must be destroyed and replaced by this and that." But a Christian says: "I know nothing about the governmental organization, or in how far it is good or bad, and for the same reason I do not want to support it."”

“All state obligations are against the conscience of a Christian: the oath of allegiance, taxes, law proceedings and military service.”

“The Churches as Churches have always been and cannot fail to be institutions not only alien to, but directly hostile towards, Christ's teaching.”

“The Churches as Churches—as institutions affirming their own infallibility—are anti-Christian institutions. Between the Churches as such and Christianity, not only is there nothing in common except the name, but they are two quite opposite and opposing principles. The one represents pride, violence, self-assertion, immobility and death: the other humility, penitence, meekness, progress, and life.”

“In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair, and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still stronger and purer. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery had arisen, as insoluble, urging him to love and to life.”

“One is ashamed to say how little is needed for all men to be delivered from those calamities which now oppress them; it is only needful not to lie.”

“Only the truth and its expression can establish that new public opinion which will reform the ancient obsolete and pernicious order of life; and yet we not only do not express the truth we know, but often even distinctly give expression to what we ourselves regard as false. If only free men would not rely on that which has no power, and is always fettered — upon external aids; but would trust in that which is always powerful and free — the truth and its expression!”

“Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.”

“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”

“The assertion that art may be good art and at the same time incomprehensible to a great number of people is extremely unjust, and its consequences are ruinous to art itself...it is the same as saying some kind of food is good but most people can't eat it.”

“People understand the meaning of eating lies in the nourishment of the body only when they cease to consider that the object of that activity is pleasure. ...People understand the meaning of art only when they cease to consider that the aim of that activity is beauty, i.e., pleasure.”

“There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.”

“In spite the mountains of books written about art, no precise definition of art has been constructed. And the reason for this is that the conception of art has been based on the conception of beauty.”

“In order to correctly define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and consider it as one of the conditions of human life. ...Reflecting on it in this way, we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of affective communication between people.”

“By words one transmits thoughts to another, by means of art, one transmits feelings.”

“To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed through words, so to convey this so that others may experience the same feeling — this is the activity of art.”

“Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one consciously, by means of certain external symbols, conveys to others the feelings one has experienced, whereby people so infected by these feelings, also experience them.”

“Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious Idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, [play or] a game in which one releases surplus energy, ...not the production of pleasing objects, and is above all, not pleasure itself, but it is the means of union among mankind, joining them in the same feelings, and necessary for the life and progress toward the good of the individual and of humanity.”

“The activity of art is... as important as the activity of language itself, and as universal.”

“The appreciation of the merits of art (of the emotions it conveys) depends upon an understanding of the meaning of life, what is seen as good and evil. Good and evil are defined by religions.”

“Having acknowledged the measure of the good to be pleasure, i.e., beauty, the European upper classes went back in their comprehension of art to the gross conception of the primitive Greeks which Plato had already condemned. And with this understanding of life, a theory of art was formulated.”

“Truth is … one approach to the attainment of the good, but in and of itself, it is neither the good nor the beautiful … Socrates, Pascal, and others regarded knowledge of the truth with regard to purposeless objects as incongruous with the good … [by] exposing deception, truth destroys illusion, which is the principle attribute of beauty.”

“Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”

“And so the arbitrary union of three incommensurate, mutually disconnected concepts became the basis of a bewildering theory... [by which] one of the lowest renderings of art, art for mere pleasure — against which all of the master teachers warned — was idealized as the ultimate in art.”

“I know that most men — not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic, problems — can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty — conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives.”

“Three years ago he was an honest, self-denying youth, ready to devote himself to every good cause; now he was a corrupt and refined egotist, given over to personal enjoyment. … And all this terrible transformation took place in him only because he ceased to have faith in himself, and began to believe in others.”

“A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.”

“In Nekhludoff, as in all people, there were two beings; one spiritual, who sought only such happiness for himself as also benefited others; and the animal being, seeking his own happiness for the sake of which he is willing to sacrifice that of the world.”

“"Let people judge me as they please—I can deceive them, but I cannot deceive myself."And he suddenly understood that the disgust which he had lately felt toward everybody … was disgust with himself.”

“"Why, you have tried to improve before, and failed," the tempter in his soul whispered. "What is the good of trying again? You are not the only one—all are alike. Such is life." But the free, spiritual being which alone is true, alone powerful, alone eternal, was already awake in Nekhludoff. And he could not help believing it. However great the difference between that which he was and that which he wished to be, for the awakened spiritual being everything was possible.”

“He crossed his hands on his breast, as he used to do when a child, raised his eyes and said:He prayed, asked God to help him and purify him, while that which he was praying for had already happened. Not only did he feel the freedom, vigor and gladness of life, but he also felt the power of good. He felt himself capable of doing the best that man can do.”

“It is remarkable that since Nekhludoff understood that he was disgusted with himself, others ceased to be repulsive to him.”

“The relation of word to thought, and the creation of new concepts is a complex, delicate and enigmatic process unfolding in our soul.”

“The oppression of a majority by a minority, and the demoralization inevitably resulting from it, is a phenomenon that has always occupied me and has done so most particularly of late.”

“Amid this life based on coercion, one and the same thought constantly emerged among different nations, namely, that in every individual a spiritual element is manifested that gives life to all that exists, and that this spiritual element strives to unite with everything of a like nature to itself, and attains this aim through love.”

“People continued — regardless of all that leads man forward — to try to unite the incompatibles : the virtue of love, and what is opposed to love, namely, the restraining of evil by violence. And such a teaching, despite its inner contradiction, was so firmly established that the very people who recognize love as a virtue accept as lawful at the same time an order of life based on violence and allowing men not merely to torture but even to kill one another.”

“...the more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything.”

“A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand men, not athletes but rather weak and ordinary people, have subdued two hundred million vigorous, clever, capable, and freedom-loving people? Do not the figures make it clear that it is not the English who have enslaved the Indians, but the Indians who have enslaved themselves?”

“As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence — as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual.”

“Do not resist the evil-doer and take no part in doing so, either in the violent deeds of the administration, in the law courts, the collection of taxes, or above all in soldiering, and no one in the world will be able to enslave you.”

“In the spiritual realm nothing is indifferent: what is not useful is harmful.”

“Life did not stop, and one had to live.”

“A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it.”

“It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.”

“Genuine religion is not about speculating about God or the soul or about what happened in the past or will happen in the future; it cares only about one thing—finding out exactly what should or should not be done in this lifetime.”

“It is terrible when people do not know God, but it is worse when people identify as God what is not God.”

“All our problems are caused by forgetting what lives within us, and we sell our souls for the “bowl of stew” of bodily satisfactions.”

“You worldly-minded people are most unfortunate! You are surrounded with sorrows and troubles overhead and underfoot and to the right and to the left, and you are enigmas even to yourselves.”

“Division of labor is a justification for sloth.”

“No one has yet added up all the heavy, stress-filled workdays as well as the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives that are wasted to produce the world’s amusements. It is for this reason that “amusements” are not so amusing.”

“Honest work is much better than a mansion.”

“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”

“Giving alms is only a virtuous deed when you give money that you yourself worked to get.”

“Wealth is a great sin in the eyes of God. Poverty is a great sin in the eyes of man.”

“Wealth brings a heavy purse; poverty, a light spirit.”

“The compassionate are not rich; therefore, the rich are not compassionate.”

“If a poor person envies a rich person, he is no better than the rich person.”

“When a person inflates his own importance, he does not see his own sins; and his sins get bigger right along with him.”

“It is often better for a person to recognize a sin than to do a good deed. Recognizing a sin makes a person humble. Doing a good deed often can feed a person’s pride.”

“When a person is haughty, he distances himself from other people and thereby deprives himself of one of life’s biggest pleasures—open, joyful communication with everyone.”

“An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person’s main task in life—becoming a better person.”

““He who exalts himself shall be humbled; and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.” (Matthew 23:12) The person who exalts himself … will be humbled, because a person who considers himself to be good, intelligent, and kind will not even try to become better, smarter, kinder. The humble person will be exalted, because he considers himself bad and will try to become better, kinder, and more reasonable.”

“The most important person is the one you are with in this moment.”

“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”

“In life, in true life, there can be nothing better than what is. Wanting something different than what is, is blasphemy.”

“Memento mori—remember death! These are important words. If we kept in mind that we will soon inevitably die, our lives would be completely different. If a person knows that he will die in a half hour, he certainly will not bother doing trivial, stupid, or, especially, bad things during this half hour. Perhaps you have half a century before you die—what makes this any different from a half hour?”

“God forgive me everything!’ she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling...”

“Boredom: the desire for desires.”

“People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing—refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.”

“Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, that's like supposing the same candle could last you all your life”

“And where love ends, hate begins”

“If only [people] understood that every thought is both false and true! False by one-sidenedness resulting from man's inability to embrace the whole truth, and true as an expression of one fact of human endeavor.”

“I suffered most from the feeling that custom was daily petrifying our lives into one fixed shape, that our minds were losing their freedom and becoming enslaved to the steady passionless course of time.”

“Muhammad has always been standing higher than the Christianity. He does not consider god as a human being and never makes himself equal to God. Muslims worship nothing except God and Muhammad is his Messenger. There is no any mystery and secret in it.”

“The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.”

“True life is lived when tiny changes occur.”

“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. ”

“In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.”

“In actuality, it was like the homes of all people who are not really rich but who want to look rich, and therefore end up looking like one another: it had damasks, ebony, plants, carpets, and bronzes, everything dark and gleaming—all the effects a certain class of people produce so as to look like people of a certain class. And his place looked so much like the others that it would never have been noticed, though it all seemed quite exceptional to him.”

“If you want to be happy, be.”

“Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.”

“Music is the shorthand of emotion.”

“A little muzhik was working on the railroad, mumbling in his beard.”

“An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life - becoming a better person.”

“Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.”

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”

“True life is lived when tiny changes occur.”

“Here I am...wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end--that there is such a thing as death.”

“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.”

“All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

“We lost because we told ourselves we lost.”

“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”

“The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.”

“Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.”

“If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.”

“Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.”

“Death, the inevitable end of all, for the first time presented itself to him with irresistible force. And death, which was here in this loved brother, groaning half asleep and from habit calling without distinction on God and the devil, was not so remote as it had hitherto seemed to him. It was in himself too, he felt that. If not today, tomorrow, if not tomorrow, in thirty years, wasn’t it all the same! And what was this inevitable death—he did not know, had never thought about it, and what was more, had not the power, had not the courage to think about it.”

“Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live.”

“If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.”

“To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.”

“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.”

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”

“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

“Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.”

“There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.”

“The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.”

“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.”

“War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.”

“The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.”

“All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.”

“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.”

“Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.”

“Boredom: the desire for desires.”

“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.”

“In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.”

“Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible.”

“All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.”

“Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.”

“And all people live, Not by reason of any care they have for themselves, But by the love for them that is in other people.”

“He never chooses an opinion; he just wears whatever happens to be in style.”

“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.”

“Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself.”

“We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening.”

“A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.”

“The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.”

“It's as if I had been going downhill when I thought I was going uphill. That's how it was. In society's opinion I was heading uphill, but in equal measure life was slipping away from me... And now it's all over. Nothing left but to die!"”

“An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life - becoming a better person.”

“And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.”

“The more mental effort he made the clearer he saw that it was undoubtedly so: that he had really forgotten and overlooked one little circumstance in life - that Death would come and end everything, so that it was useless to begin anything, and that there was no help for it, Yes it was terrible but true”

“Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.”

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time. …so remember: great achievements take time; there is no overnight success.”

“To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.”

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”

“In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.”

“All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

“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. ”

“But when, as is most often the case, the husband and wife accept the external obligation to live together all their lives and have, by the second month, come to loathe the sight of each other, want to get divorced and yet go on living together, it usually ends in that terrible hell that drives them to drink, makes them shoot themselves, kill and poison each other”

“You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.”

“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”

“It can't be that life is so senseless and horrible. But if it really has been so horrible and senseless, why must I die and die in agony? There is something wrong!”

“So those are the direct answers human wisdom gives when it answers the question of life. "The life of the body is evil and a lie. And therefore the destruction of this life of the body is something good, and we must desire it," says Socrates. "Life is that which ought not be - an evil - and the going into nothingness is the sole good of life," says Schopenhauer. "Everything in the world - folly and wisdom and riches and poverty and happiness and grief - all is vanity and nonsense. Man will die and nothing will remain. And that is foolish," says Solomon. "One must not live with awareness of the inevitability of suffering, weakness, old age, and death - one must free oneself from life, from all possibility of life," says Buddha. And what these powerful intellects said was said and thought and felt by millions and millions of people like them. And I too thought and felt that.”

“The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.”

“Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live.”

“The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.”

“Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth.”

“I know that my unity with all people cannot be destroyed by national boundaries and government orders.”

“A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.”

“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 any means possible, except getting off his back.”

“Six feet of land was all that he needed.”

“The happiness of men consists in life. And life is in labor.”

“The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people.”

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”

“The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase.”

“Condemn me if you choose — I do that myself, — but condemn me, and not the path which I am following, and which I point out to those who ask me where, in my opinion, the path is.”

“Tell people that war is an evil, and they will laugh; for who does not know it? Tell them that patriotism is an evil, and most of them will agree, but with a reservation. "Yes," they will say, "wrong patriotism is an evil; but there is another kind, the kind we hold." But just what this good patriotism is, no one explains.”

“Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and truth.”

“There can be only one permanent revolution — a moral one; the regeneration of the inner man. How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.”

“Every one who has a heart and eyes sees that you, working men, are obliged to pass your lives in want and in hard labor, which is useless to you, while other men, who do not work, enjoy the fruits of your labor—that you are the slaves of these men, and that this ought not to exist.”

“All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.”

“Understand then all of you, especially the young, that to want to impose an imaginary state of government on others by violence is not only a vulgar superstition, but even a criminal work. Understand that this work, far from assuring the well-being of humanity is only a lie, a more or less unconscious hypocrisy, camouflaging the lowest passions we posses.”

“The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens … Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere.”

“Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: 'what shall we do and how shall we live”

“Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, commonly referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian novelist, writer, essayist, philosopher, Christian anarchist, pacifist, educational reformer, moral thinker, and an influential member of the Tolstoy family. As a fiction writer Tolstoy is widely regarded as one of the greatest of all novelists, particularly noted for his masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina; in their scope, breadth and realistic depiction of Russian life, the two books stand at the peak of realistic fiction. As a moral philosopher he was notable for his ideas on nonviolent resistance through his work The Kingdom of God is Within You, which in turn influenced such twentieth-century figures as Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Source: Wikipedia”

“Love those you hate you.”

“There is only one enduring happiness in life—to live for others.”

“The only thing that we know is that we know nothing — and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.”

“Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrei went up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the farewell kiss. And there in the coffin was the same face, though with closed eyes. "Ah, what have you done to me?" it still seemed to say, and Prince Andrei felt that something gave way in his soul and that he was guilty of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget.”

“Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.”

“You will die — and it will all be over. You will die and find out everything — or cease asking.”

“In historical events great men — so-called — are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. 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.”

“A king is history's slave.”

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

“Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.”

“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”

“War is not a courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that, and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game. As it is now, war is the favourite pastime of the idle and frivolous.”

“He did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart from their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation of an activity unknown to him, which was his life.”

“Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”

“To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved sufferings.”

“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.”

“For us, with the rule of right and wrong given us by Christ, there is nothing for which we have no standard. And there is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”

“When a man sees a dying animal, horror comes over him: that which he himself is, his essence, is obviously being annihilated before his eyes--is ceasing to be. But when the dying one is a person, and a beloved person, then, besides a sense of horror at the annihilation of life, there is a feeling of severance and a spiritual wound which, like a physical wound, sometimes kills and sometimes heals, but always hurts and fears any external, irritating touch.”

“Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.”

“History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put into words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a single nation, appears impossible.”

“Vengeance is mine; I will repay.”

“There was no answer, except the general answer life gives to all the most complex and insoluble questions. That answer is: one must live for the needs of the day, in other words, become oblivious. To become oblivious in dreams was impossible now, at least till night-time; it was impossible to return to that music sung by carafe-women; and so one had to become oblivious in the dreams of life.”

“Stephan Arkadievich chose neither his attitudes nor his opinions, no, the attitudes and opinions came to him on their own, just as he chose neither the style of his hat nor of his coats but got what people were wearing.”

“He knew she was there by the joy and fear that overwhelmed his heart.”

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”

“All his life Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived and worked in official spheres, having to do with the reflection of life. And every time he had stumbled against life itself he had shrunk away from it. Now he experienced a feeling akin to that of a man who, wile calmly crossing a precipice by a bridge, should suddenly discover that the bridge is broken, and that there is a chasm below. That chasm was life itself, the bridge that artificial life in which Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived.”

“There was something in her higher than what surrounded her. There was in her the glow of the real diamond among glass imitations. This glow shone out in her exquisite, truly enigmatic eyes. The weary, and at the same time passionate, glance of those eyes, encircled by dark rings, impressed one by its perfect sincerity. Everyone looking into those eyes fancied he knew her wholly, and knowing her, could not but love her.”

“Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.”

“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.”

““If you want him defined, here he is: a prime, well-fed beast such as takes medals at the cattle shows, and nothing more,” he said, with a tone of vexation that interested her.“It's an utterly different culture—their culture. He's cultivated, one sees, simply to be able to despise culture, as they despise everything but animal pleasures.””

“One can insult an honest man or an honest woman, but to tell a thief that he is a thief is merely la constation d'un fait [The establishing of a fact.]”

“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”

“Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.”

“There is one evident, indubitable manifestation of the Divinity, and that is the laws of right which are made known to the world through Revelation.”

“To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.”

“My reason will still not understand why I pray, but I shall still pray, and my life, my whole life, independently of anything that may happen to me, is every moment of it no longer meaningless as it was before, but has an unquestionable meaning of goodness with which I have the power to invest it.'”

“Go — take the mother's soul, and learn three truths: Learn What dwells in man, What is not given to man, and What men live by. When thou hast learnt these things, thou shalt return to heaven.”

“I thought: "I am perishing of cold and hunger, and here is a man thinking only of how to clothe himself and his wife, and how to get bread for themselves. He cannot help me. When the man saw me he frowned and became still more terrible, and passed me by on the other side. I despaired, but suddenly I heard him coming back. 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.”

“Then I remembered the first lesson God had set me: "Learn what dwells in man." 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.”

“The man is making preparations for a year, and does not know that he will die before evening. And I remembered God's second saying, "Learn what is not given to man." 'What dwells in man" I already knew. Now I learnt what is not given him. It is not given to man to know his own needs.”

“When the woman showed her love for the children that were not her own, and wept over them, I saw in her the living God, and understood What men live by.”

“Quite often a man goes on for years imagining that the religious teaching that had been imparted to him since childhood is still intact, while all the time there is not a trace of it left in him.”

“I cannot recall those years without horror, loathing, and heart-rending pain. I killed people in war, challenged men to duels with the purpose of killing them, and lost at cards; I squandered the fruits of the peasants' toil and then had them executed; I was a fornicator and a cheat. Lying, stealing, promiscuity of every kind, drunkenness, violence, murder — there was not a crime I did not commit... Thus I lived for ten years.”

“My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfilment of which I could consider reasonable. If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires I should not have known what to ask. If in moments of intoxication I felt something which, though not a wish, was a habit left by former wishes, in sober moments I knew this to be a delusion and that there was really nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guess of what it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless.”

“No one can attain to truth by himself. Only by laying stone on stone with the cooperation of all, by the millions of generations from our forefather Adam to our own times, is that temple reared which is to be a worthy dwelling place of the Great God.”

“Several times I asked myself, "Can it be that I have overlooked something, that there is something which I have failed to understand? Is it not possible that this state of despair is common to everyone?" And I searched for an answer to my questions in every area of knowledge acquired by man. For a long time I carried on my painstaking search; I did not search casually, out of mere curiosity, but painfully, persistently, day and night, like a dying man seeking salvation. I found nothing.”

“The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.”

“All his life the example of a syllogism he had studied in Kiesewetter's logic - "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal" - had seemed to him to be true only in relation to Caius the man, man in general, and it was quite justified , but he wasn't Caius and he wasn't man in general, and he had always been something quite, quite special apart from all other beings; he was Vanya, with Mama, with Papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with his toys and the coachman, with Nyanya, then with Katenka, with all the joys, sorrows, passions of childhood, boyhood, youth. Did Caius know the smell of the striped leather ball Vanya loved so much?: Did Caius kiss his mother's hand like that and did the silken folds of Caius's mother's dress rustle like that for him? Was Caius in love like that? Could Caius chair a session like that? And Caius is indeed mortal and it's right that he should die, but for me, Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my feelings and thoughts - for me it's quite different. And it cannot be that I should die. It would be too horrible.”

“For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite.”