Quote

If goodness has causes, it is not goodness if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect.

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
Cause
Chain
Either
Reward
Causes
Chains
Rewards
Effect
Goodness
Outside
Effects

More quotes by Leo Tolstoy

Image
Men are so accustomed to maintaining external order by violence that they cannot conceive of life being possible without violence.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
There is nothing more harmful to you than improving only your material, animal side of life. There is nothing more beneficial, both for you and for others, than activity directed to the improvement of your soul.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
God knows, but He's waiting
Leo Tolstoy
Image
And for him, who lived in a certain circle, and who required some mental activity such as usually develops with maturity, having views was as necessary as having a hat.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
The activity of art is... as important as the activity of language itself, and as universal.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. A handsome woman talks nonsense, you listen and hear not nonsense but cleverness. She says and does horrid things, and you see only charm. And if a handsome woman does not say stupid or horrid things, you at once persuade yourself that she is wonderfully clever and moral.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
Vegetarianism serves as the criterion by which we know that the pursuit of moral perfection on the part of humanity is genuine and sincere.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
Nowadays, as before, the public declaration and confession of Orthodoxy is usually encountered among dull-witted, cruel and immoral people who tend to consider themselves very important. Whereas intelligence, honesty, straightforwardness, good-naturedness and morality are qualities usually found among people who claim to be non-believers.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
There is one evident, indubitable manifestation of the Divinity, and that is the laws of right which are made known to the world through Revelation.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the greater the number of people he is connected with, the more power he has over other people, the more obvious is the predestination and inevitability of his every action.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
The law of violence is not a law, but a simple fact which can only be a law when it does not meet with protest and opposition. It is like the cold, darkness and weight, which people had to put up with until recently when warmth, illumination and leverage were discovered.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
If you do not know your place in the world and the meaning of your life, you should know there is something to blame and it is not the social system, or your intellect, but the way in which you have directed your intellect.
Leo Tolstoy
Image
One must be cunning and wicked in this world.
Leo Tolstoy