Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910), usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time.
Leo Tolstoy Quotes
Respect every person, but respect every child a hundred times more and take care not to damage the chaste purity of his soul.
—Leo Tolstoy
He who has nothing to say speaks most of all.
—Leo Tolstoy
Each of us only needs one thing: a heart beating within us that’s free of blame, contempt, irritation, and ill will toward others. Therefore, every act that makes you irritated with people and distances you from them rather than bringing you closer to them is a waste.
—Leo Tolstoy
The philosopher Kant said that two things always astonished and inspired him more and more: the starry sky and the consciousness of the law of kindness that a person recognizes in his soul.
—Leo Tolstoy
Working on freeing your soul from your body in order to make it more spiritual and filled with love each and every day is the only genuine labor.
—Leo Tolstoy
It’s easier to enlighten the world’s stupidest person than to enlighten a proud person.
—Leo Tolstoy
A wise person never wants to change his earthly life, because he’s always happy with the life he’s living.
—Leo Tolstoy
Just recognize that you’re not the master but a servant and your searching, anxiety, and dissatisfaction will instantly transform into certainty, tranquility, peace and indestructible joy.
—Leo Tolstoy
The best answer to a fool is silence. Every word you speak to a fool bounces back to you. 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
If a person believes that he can please God with rituals and prayers but not deeds, it means he wants to deceive God, but he only deceives himself.
—Leo Tolstoy
If a person believes his strength is in his physical rather than his spiritual life, he’s like a bird that walks from place to place on its pathetic little legs and doesn’t use its wings to fly where it needs to go.
—Leo Tolstoy
When people criticize and condemn you, take joy. When they praise and applaud you, be afraid and grieve.
—Leo Tolstoy
Truth is forgotten in an argument. He who ends the argument is the smartest one.
—Leo Tolstoy
There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the human heart that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.
—Leo Tolstoy
The majority of human actions aren’t a result of reason, or even of emotion, but of mindless imitation, of suggestion.
—Leo Tolstoy
People respect idle, rich people, and not those who do work inarguably useful to everyone: farmers, laborers.
—Leo Tolstoy
Questions aren’t solved in arguments but in investigations within yourself, when you challenge yourself with all your might.
—Leo Tolstoy
You thrash about, suffer and search for happiness everywhere, but it’s within you. It’s not in people’s love for you, as it appears at first, but in your love for them.
—Leo Tolstoy
I cannot close my eyes to the fact that, by eating meat, I demand the murder of living beings to satisfy my luxurious lifestyle and my taste.
—Leo Tolstoy
The worse people’s lives are, the more they surround themselves with external affectations: fine clothes, temples, palaces, parades, social events, church services, processions, séances, and speeches.
—Leo Tolstoy
People want to remain as bad as they are, but they want their lives to improve.
—Leo Tolstoy
There are people who take upon themselves the right to decide for others what their relationship to God and the world should be, and there are people—the vast majority—who give this right to others and blindly believe what they say. Both are equally guilty and pathetic.
—Leo Tolstoy
If we search within ourselves, we can almost always find the very sin we condemn someone else for. If we don’t find precisely that sin, all we have to do is search and we’ll find something worse.
—Leo Tolstoy
It’s good to accustom yourself to doing good deeds that no one will ever know about.
—Leo Tolstoy
In every religion there is both truth and falsehood. Try to find the truth in the religion you were born into.
—Leo Tolstoy
You can be intelligent without ever having read a book, but if you believe everything that’s written in books, you can’t help but be a fool.
—Leo Tolstoy
No one can truly recognize the equality of people in life as well as children can. So how criminal it is for adults to teach them that there are kings, rich men & celebrities whom you must respect, and servants, workers and beggars whom you’re allowed to treat with condescension.
—Leo Tolstoy
People aren’t punished for their sins, they’re punished by their sins.
—Leo Tolstoy
In order to be happy, you must always think of others, especially when you’re speaking to someone.
—Leo Tolstoy
Not just Christ, but all the sages of the world—Brahmins, Buddhists, Taoists, and the Greek sages—taught that rational people repay evil with good, not with evil.
—Leo Tolstoy