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Artist Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

37 Artist quotes by Leo Tolstoy

All Artist quotes Leo Tolstoy’s page

Tolstoy’s voice carries a weight that makes even a single line feel like a lecture in a small hall. Across 37 passages, he weaves his classic moral gravity into observations about creators, offering a nuanced view that balances idealism with gritty reality.

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All art has this characteristic-it unites people.

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Art should cause violence to be set aside and it is only art that can accomplish this.

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“Where there has been true science, art has always been its exponent.”

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

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Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.

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

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Great works of art are only great because they are accessible and comprehensible to everyone.

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Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is great matter.

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Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective, of nature with reason, of the unconscious with the conscious, and therefore…

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The appreciation of the merits of art of the emotions it conveys depends upon an understanding of the meaning of life...

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The artist's mission must not be to produce an irrefutable solution to a problem, but to compel us to love life in…

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A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist.

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Art is a microscope which the artist fixes on the secrets of his soul, and shows to people these secrets which are…

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Art begins when a man, with a purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again…

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“The goal of the artist is not to solve a question irrefutably, but to force people to love life in all its…

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The political is not compatible with the artistic, because the former, in order to prove, has to be one-sided.

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

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In order to correctly define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure…

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Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others…

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

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True art and true science possess two unmistakable marks: the first, an inward mark, which is this, that the servitor of art…

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In the evolution of knowledge-mistaken and unnecessary beliefs are forced out and supplanted by truer and more necessary knowledge. So too in…

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“We are accustomed to understand art to be only what we hear and see in theaters, concerts, and exhibitions, together with buildings,…

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Real art, like the wife of an affectionate husband, needs no ornaments. But counterfeit art, like a prostitute, must always be decked…

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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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Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship both with him who produced the art,…

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Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the…

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

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“The one thing necessary in life, as in art is to tell the truth.”

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Art is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feeling.

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

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“Pestsov maintained that art is one, and that it can attai its highest mainfestation only in conjunction with all kinds of art.”

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

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“The artists of various sects, like the theologians of the various sects, mutually exclude and destroy themselves.”

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Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture, so I need an inner light,…

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The business of art lies just in this, -- to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument,…

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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…

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

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

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

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“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…

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

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

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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True life is lived when tiny changes occur.

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