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People Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

103 People quotes by Leo Tolstoy

All People quotes Leo Tolstoy’s page

Art is a way to hand over feelings we have lived through to other people. Tolstoy notes that many chase pleasure because they sense emptiness inside, and that loving deeply brings both sorrow and a chance to heal. He also warns that violence pretends to be justice but actually pushes people farther from living fairly.

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All art has this characteristic-it unites people.

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Happy people have no history.

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

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In a writer there must always be two people - the writer and the critic.

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We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them.

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People are always happy where there is love, because their happiness in in themselves.

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The kinder and the more thoughtful a person is, the more kindness he can find in other people.

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Anna smiled,as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love. . .

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I don't think badly of people. I like everybody, and I'm sorry for everybody.

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Pierre was one of those people who are strong only when they feel themselves perfectly pure.

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The kinder and more intelligent a person is, the more kindness he can find in other people. Kindness enriches our life; with…

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Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside…

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Only greatly insolent people establish a religious law which is to be taken for granted by others, which should be accepted by…

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I have to create a circle of reading for myself: Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal, The New Testament. This is also…

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People jump back and forth in pursuit of pleasures only because they see the emptiness of their lives more clearly than they…

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

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One can no more approach people without love than one can approach bees without care. Such is the quality of bees...

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And all people live, Not by reason of any care they have for themselves, But by the love for them that is…

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Patriotism is "a very definite feeling of preference for one's own people or State above all other peoples and States, and a…

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Smiling with pleasure, they went through their memories, not sad, old people's memories, but poetic, youthful ones, those impressions from the very…

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It would, therefore, seem obvious that patriotism as a feeling is bad and harmful, and as a doctrine is stupid. For it…

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True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society…

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Slavery results from laws, laws are made by governments, and, therefore people can only be freed from slavery by the abolition of…

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If you see that some aspect of your society is bad, and you want to improve it, there is only one way…

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The whole trouble lies in that people think that there are conditions excluding the necessity of love in their intercourse with man,…

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Nowadays, as before, the public declaration and confession of Orthodoxy is usually encountered among dull-witted, cruel and immoral people who tend to…

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Slavery, you know, is nothing else than the unwilling labor of many. Therefore to get rid of slavery it is necessary that…

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To us, it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was…

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I'll get angry in the same way with the coachman Ivan, argue in the same way, speak my mind inappropriately, there will…

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The workmen's revolution, with the terrors of destruction and murder, not only threatens us, but we have already been living upon its…

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But it seems to me that a man cannot and ought not to say that he loves, he said. Why not? I…

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The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without authority, there could…

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What is now happening to the people of the East as of the West is like what happens to every individual when…

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The artist of the future will live the ordinary life of a human being, earning his living by some kind of labour.…

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If you want to be happy, try only to please God, not people.

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

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Since corrupt people unite amongst themselves to constitute a force, then honest people must do the same.

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The kinder and more thoughtful a person is, the more kindness they can find in other people.

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The key to success in life is using the good thoughts of wise people.

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Art can compel people freely, gladly, and spontaneously to sacrifice themselves in the service of man.

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More by Leo Tolstoy

These joys were so trifling as to be as imperceptible as grains of gold among the sand, and in moments of depression she saw…

The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God.

“I already love in you your beauty, but I am only beginning to love in you that which is eternal and ever precious –…

Energy rests upon love; and come as it will, there's no forcing it.

“If you only knew what those society women are, and women in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial in everything—that's what…

To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds,…

To speak of it would be giving importance to that which has none.

Once we're thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost, but it's only here that the new and the good begins.

“He knew she was there by the rapture and the terror that seized on his heart. She was standing talking to a lady at…

Rest, nature, books, music...such is my idea of happiness.

“He was not to blame for being born with an irrepressible charachter and a mind some how constrained.”

I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do. But if even that cannot be, command…

The idea shared by many that life is a vale of tears is just as false as the idea shared by the great majority,…

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind…

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.