Quotes from Leo Tolstoy

Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man's life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible.

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

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

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

Not all of life's roads are set fast, for a man may do this or a man may do that and not even the gods know the mind of a man.

Woman is generally so bad that the difference between a good and a bad woman scarcely exists.

Woman is more impressionable than man. Therefore in the Golden Age they were better than men. Now they are worse.

There is trouble with a wife, but it's even worse with a woman who is not a wife.

Natasha, in her lilac silk dress trimmed with black lace walked, as women can walk, with the more repose and stateliness the greater the pain and shame in her soul.

Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and agonies of the soul, but all the time his most tormenting tragedy has been, is, and will always be, the tragedy of the bedroom.

Woman, don't you know, is such a subject that however much you study it, it's always perfectly new.

Regard the society of women as a necessary unpleasantness of social life and avoid it as much as possible.

One ought to write only when one leaves a piece of one's flesh in the inkpot each time one dips one's pen.

The government in which I believe is that which is based on mere moral sanction ... the real law lives in the kindness of our hearts. If our hearts are empty, no law or political reform can fill them.

But now everything will be different. It is nonsense to believe that life will not allow it, that the past will not allow it. I must struggle to live a better life, a far better life.

Patriotism is a survival from barbarous times which must not only be evoked and educated but which must be eradicated by all means - by preaching, persuasion, contempt and ridicule.

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity.

The earth is the general and equal possession of all humanity and therefore cannot be the property of individuals.

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 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.

My piece of bread only belongs to me when I know that everyone else has a share, and that no one starves while I eat.

One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one's own flesh in the inkpot, each time one dips one's pen.

Our body is a machine for living. It is geared towards it; it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself; it will be more effective than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies.

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.