Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy Quotes

Boredom: the desire for desires

The religious superstition is encouraged by means of the institution of churches, processions, monuments, festivities....The so-called clergy stupefy the masses....They befog the people and keep them in an eternal condition of stupefaction

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.

Conceit is incompatible with understanding

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the state, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment, its wars

If a man earnestly seeks a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from animal food.

We lost because we told ourselves we lost

I know that my unity with all people cannot be destroyed by national boundaries and government orders.

Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.

Some mathematician has said pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in seeking it.

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

You can`t imagine what a pleasure this complete laziness is to me: not a thought in my brain- you might send a ball rolling through it!

Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised

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

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

Before we can study the central issues of life today, we must destroy the prejudices and fallacies born of previous centuries

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

In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning and cruelty