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Artist Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

37 Artist quotes by Leo Tolstoy

All Artist quotes Leo Tolstoy’s page

Leo Tolstoy explains that art is a way to share personal feelings through lines, colors, or sounds, turning private experience into something others can sense. He says art joins the inner and outer worlds, and that its purpose is not just pleasure but a condition of humanity. He also notes that politics and art often clash.

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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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All art has this characteristic-it unites people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.