Leo Tolstoy

If you want to find an example to copy, look for it among simple, humble people. True greatness, which not only refrains from putting itself on display but isn’t even conscious of its own greatness, is only found among such people.

—Leo Tolstoy

Every person must remember that political borders and the multitude of governmental authorities are human creations, and that before God we are all inhabitants of one and the same Earth and all subject to God’s law, not some human authority.

—Leo Tolstoy

All you need to do is abandon established customs & superstitions & look at the position of every person who lives under a government, whether it be a despotic or the most democratic, & you’ll be horrified at the degree of slavery in which people live while imagining they’re free

—Leo Tolstoy

If a person understands his life is in his soul and not his body, you can put him in chains or lock him in iron locks and he’ll still remain free.

—Leo Tolstoy

A person can live a good life only if he understands that he’s a spiritual being, united with all beings and with Everything. If a person understands himself merely as a physical being, he’ll live only for himself, and someone who lives only for himself cannot live a good life.

—Leo Tolstoy

The more a person lives for his soul rather than his body, the more he feels his unity with all living beings.

—Leo Tolstoy

A person who knows he’s going to die in thirty minutes won’t do anything vain, stupid or, most of all, bad in that last half hour. But isn’t the half-century that might separate you from death the same as thirty minutes?

—Leo Tolstoy

The best answer to a fool is silence.

—Leo Tolstoy

A rich man has fifteen rooms for three people and he won’t let a poor man spend the night in his home and get warm.

A peasant has a fifteen-foot wide hut for seven people and he gladly takes in a stranger.

—Leo Tolstoy

All human tragedies are a result of human blindness, of man’s inability to see the God who lives within him and sees Him in all people.

—Leo Tolstoy

If there’s life after death then it’s something we can’t imagine.

—Leo Tolstoy

What an amazing inconsistency: the death penalty and war are considered essential conditions of life by people who call themselves Christians.

—Leo Tolstoy

If you want to be intelligent, learn to ask rationally, listen carefully, answer calmly, and stop talking when there’s nothing more to say. Johann Lavater

—Leo Tolstoy

In order to live a good life you have to place truth above everything else, so that you don’t fear speaking the truth even if the truth harms you as you speak.

—Leo Tolstoy

Nothing weakens a person more than hope in something other than his own effort to find salvation and happiness.

—Leo Tolstoy

If you really feel the urge to speak, definitely stay silent, and most of all don’t say what you want to say.

—Leo Tolstoy

Lust is the source of life’s greatest disasters and agonies. Therefore, it is inherent in people to try to moderate and silence it with all their strength. Yet people in our time do all they can to enflame it, treating lust and infatuation as the most elevated of feelings.

—Leo Tolstoy

Respect every person, but respect every child one hundred times more, and take care not to harm the chaste purity of their souls.

—Leo Tolstoy

Passion for wealth engenders worry, envy, deceit, hatred, curses, and countless other barriers to virtue.

—Leo Tolstoy

Don’t honor the wealthy, don’t envy them; keep your distance from them and pity them.

—Leo Tolstoy

The majority of human actions aren’t a result of reason, or even of emotion, but of mindless imitation.

—Leo Tolstoy

Lead your life so that you neither fear death nor desire it.

—Leo Tolstoy

The earth is not the property of one man or even an entire generation, but of all past, present and future generations who work on it.

—Leo Tolstoy

Never put off a good deed if you can do it now, because death doesn’t take into account whether you’ve done what you should have or not.

—Leo Tolstoy

Asking God to send you blessings in this life is like sitting at a spring and asking the spring to quench your thirst. You’ve been given every possible blessing. You only need to be able to use them.

—Leo Tolstoy

Repaying offense with offense is just putting more wood on the fire, but he who meets his offender with peace has already defeated him with peace itself.

—Leo Tolstoy

Man’s vocation is to serve God and all people, not to serve some people and do evil to others. Therefore a person who understands his vocation cannot consider himself a member of an individual state.

—Leo Tolstoy

Never praise yourself, never judge others, and never argue.

—Leo Tolstoy

People learn how to speak, when the most important science is how and when to stay silent.

—Leo Tolstoy

The more you feel the urge to speak, the greater the risk that you’ll say something stupid.

—Leo Tolstoy