Skip to content

Peace Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

49 Peace quotes by Leo Tolstoy

All Peace quotes Leo Tolstoy’s page

Tolstoy points out that people often claim peace while preparing for war, and that violence only creates a false sense of justice. He describes war as ugly and unjust, and he questions the idea that calm is always better than excitement. His words show how fear and illusion can shape a world.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

“One need only admit that public tranquillity is in danger and any action finds a justification. All”

Image

Men need only trust in Christ's teaching and obey it, and there will be peace on earth.

Image

Let us forgive each other - only then will we live in peace.

Image

“Blessed are the peacemakers; theirs is the kingdom of heaven”

Image

There can be no peace for us, only misery, and the greatest happiness.

Image

If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace.

Image

“All the horrors of the reign of terror were based on concern for public tranquility.”

Image

“And so there was no single cause for war, but it happened simply because it had to happen”

Image

War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume…

Image

“I want movement, not a calm course of existence. I want excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my…

Image

What an immense mass of evil must result...from allowing men to assume the right of anticipating what may happen.

Image

And once he had seen this, he could never again see it otherwise, just as we cannot reconstruct an illusion once it…

Image

“In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of…

Image

Violence produces only something resembling justice, but it distances people from the possibility of living justly, without violence.

Image

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

Image

Men are so accustomed to maintaining external order by violence that they cannot conceive of life being possible without violence.

Image

But if Christianity really gives peace, and we really want peace, patriotism is a survival from barbarous times, which must not only…

Image

“Only during a period of war does it become obvious how millions of people can be manipulated. People, millions of people, are…

Image

Don’t you know that you are all my life to me? ...But peace I do not know, and can’t give to you.…

Image

“How can it be that I’ve never seen that lofty sky before? Oh, how happy I am to have found it at…

Image

“War is not a polite recreation but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that and not play at…

Image

“If there were no magnanimity in war, we'd go to it only when it was worth going to certain death, as now.…

Image

Well, my theory is this: war is such a terrible, such an atrocious, thing that no man, at least no Christian man,…

Image

War is not courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that, and not play at war.…

Image

“...And there really are men who believe in this, who spend their time in promoting Leagues of Peace, in delivering addresses, and…

Image

“It is often said that the invention of terrible weapons of destruction will put an end to war. That is an error.…

Image

“[from Some words about 'War and Peace' ] In those days also people loved, envied, sought truth and virtue, and where carried…

Image

If patriotism is good, then Christianity, which gives peace, is an idle dream, and the sooner this teaching is eradicated, the better.…

Image

“wisdom needs no violence...As it is we have played at war – that’s what’s vile! We play at magnanimity and all that…

Image

War is like a game of chess ... but with this little difference, that in chess you may think over each move…

Image

“With 6 children Darya Alexandrovna could not be calm. One got sick, another might get sick, a third lacked something, a fourth…

Image

“[from Some words about 'War and Peace' ] For a historian considering the achievement of a certain aim, there are heroes; for…

Image

“Peaceful with six children Darya Alexandrova could not be...Rare indeed were the brief periods of peace...hard though it was for the mother…

Image

“War is the most painful act of subjection to the laws of God that can be required of the human will.”

Image

“What a terrible thing war is, what a terrible thing!”

Image

Why does man have reason if he can only be influenced by violence?

Image

As long as there are slaughter houses there will always be battlefields.

Image

As long as there are slaughterhouses there will be battlefields. A vegetarian diet is the acid test of humanitarianism.

Image

Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she would not be happy

Image

War is not a polite recreation but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that and not play at…

Image

Other authors on Peace

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.