Quote

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.

Leo Tolstoy

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Leo Tolstoy
Age: 82 †
Born: 1828
Born: January 1
Died: 1910
Died: January 1
Diarist
Esperantist
Essayist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Playwright
Prosaist
Writer
Tolstoi
Tolstoy
Lev Nikolaevich
graf Tolstoĭ
Lev Nikolayevich
Count Tolstoy
Count Lev Tolstoy
Leo
graf Tolstoy
Lev
Count Tolstoy
Lev
graf Tolsztoj
Лев Николаевич
c граф Толстой
Lew
graf Tolstoi
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy
Lev Tolstoy
Count Leo Tolstoy
States
External
Reason
Shoot
Live
Contrary
Mean
Conscience
Would
Literature
Men
State
Consciences
Time
Half
Intolerable
Means
Existed

More quotes by Leo Tolstoy

Image
Eating meat is a leftover of the greatest brutality [killing] the transition to vegetarianism is the first and most natural consequence of enlightenment.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
There is no genius where there is not simplicity.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
it is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame some one else, and especially the person nearest of all to him, for the ground of his dissatisfaction.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
In order to obtain and hold power a man must love it. Thus the effort to get it is not likely to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities of pride, craft and cruelty.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
God forgive me everything!' she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
Morning or night, Friday or Sunday, made no difference, everything was the same: the gnawing, excruciating, incessant pain that awareness of life irrevocably passing but not yet gone that dreadful, loathsome death, the only reality, relentlessly closing in on him and that same endless lie. What did days, weeks, or hours matter?
Leo Tolstoy
Image
A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
The kinder and the more thoughtful a person is, the more kindness he can find in other people.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
If you're not enjoying your work, you should either change your attitude, or change your job.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
I have learned what must be, and therefore have come to see the whole horror of what is.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
It boils down to this: we should have done with humbug, and let war be war, and not a game ... If there were none of this magnanimity business in warfare, we should never go to war, except for something worth facing certain death for.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
Woman is generally so bad that the difference between a good and a bad woman scarcely exists.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
Why does man have reason if he can only be influenced by violence?
Leo Tolstoy
Image
He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
The chief attraction of military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
To get rid of an enemy one must love him.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. Where is it? What death? There was no fear because there was no death. In place of death there was light.
Leo Tolstoy