“To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We are all brothers, but I live on a salary paid me for prosecuting, judging, and
condemning the thief or the prostitute whose existence the whole tenor of my life brings
about...We are all brothers, but I live on the salary I gain by collecting taxes from needy
laborers to be spent on the luxuries of the rich and idle. We are all brothers, but I take a
stipend for preaching a false Christian religion, which I do not myself believe in, and which
only serves to hinder men from understanding true Christianity.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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
“Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the
historic, universal aims of humanity.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Whatever we may say about the soul going to the sky... we know there is no sky but only
an atmosphere.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken
and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“At school he had done things which had formerly seemed to him very horrid and made him
feel disgusted with himself when he did them; but when later on he saw that such actions were
done by people of good position and that they did not regard them as wrong, he was able not
exactly to regard them as right, but to forget about them entirely or not be at all troubled at
remembering them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Anything is better than lies and deceit!
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The only real science is the knowledge of how a person should live his life. And this
knowledge is open to everyone.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A battle is won by the side that is absolutely determined to win. Why did we lose the battle
of Austerlitz? Our casualties were about the same as those of the French, but we had told
ourselves early in the day that the battle was lost, so it was lost.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the
inner workings of his very soul.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done
them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“They had to return to the one sure and never-failing resource- slander.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
