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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.

Leo Tolstoy

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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
Heart
Based
Sanction
Believe
Politics
Sanctions
Law
Fill
Moral
Reform
Lives
Kindness
Political
Hearts
Government
Mere
Real
Empty

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I imagine, joking apart, that to know love, one must make mistakes and then correct them.
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As soon as man applies his intelligence to any object at all, he unfailingly destroys the object.
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The subject of history is the life of peoples and mankind.
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I can't understand how anyone can write without rewriting everything over and over again.
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If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.
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The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people.
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The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.
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Honest work is much better than a mansion.
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In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning.
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Too much polishing and you spoil things. There's a limit to the expressibility of ideas. You have a new thought, an interesting one. Then, as you try to perfect it, it ceases to be new and interesting, and loses the freshness with which it first occurred to you. You're spoiling it.
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We should show life neither as it is or as it ought to be, but only as we see it in our dreams.
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History, that is to say, the unconscious, universal life of humanity, in the aggregate, every moment profits by the life of kings for itself, as an instrument for the accomplishment of its own ends.
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All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.
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The subject of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch and pin down in words--that is, to describe directly the life, not only of humanity, but even of a single people, appears to be impossible.
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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.
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Men pray to the Almighty to relieve poverty. But poverty comes not from God's laws-it is blasphemy of the worst kind to say that. Poverty comes from man's injustice to his fellow man.
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Every time I tried to express my most heartfelt desires to be morally good I met with contempt and ridicule and as soon as I would give in to vile passions I was praised and encouraged. Ambition, love of power, self-interest, lechery, pride, anger, vengeance-all of it was highly esteemed.
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People understand the meaning of eating lies in the nourishment of the body only when they cease to consider that the object of that activity is pleasure. ...People understand the meaning of art only when they cease to consider that the aim of that activity is beauty, i.e., pleasure.
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He looked at her as a man might look at a faded flower he had plucked, in which it was difficult for him to trace the beauty that had made him pick and so destroy it
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