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Action(s)
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The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God.
-Leo Tolstoy
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Apathy
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A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally both in mind and body as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world and therefore, as an Englishman, always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth -- science -- which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.
-Leo Tolstoy
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Art
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To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.
-Leo Tolstoy
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Attitude
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We lost because we told ourselves we lost.
-Leo Tolstoy
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Authors & Writing
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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
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Boredom
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Boredom: the desire for desires.
-Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1877
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Change
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The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience ... not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.
-Leo Tolstoy, letter Tolstoy, February 23, 1903
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True life is lived when tiny changes occur.
-Leo Tolstoy
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Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
-Leo Tolstoy
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Christianity
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Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the state, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment and its wars.
-Leo Tolstoy
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Control
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I am always with myself and it is I who am my tormentor.
-Leo Tolstoy
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Death
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But the peasants -- how do the peasants die?
-Leo Tolstoy
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He who has a mistaken idea of life, will always have a mistaken idea of death.
-Leo Tolstoy
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Family
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All happy families are alike, but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion.
http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/anna_karenina3.asp
-Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (opening line), 1877
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Fashion
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He never chooses an opinion, he just wears whatever happens to be in style.
-Leo Tolstoy
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Goodness
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Though it is possible to utter words only with the intention to fulfill the will of God, it is very difficult not to think about the impression which they will produce on men and not to form them accordingly. But deeds you can do quite unknown to men, only for God. And such deeds are the greatest joy that a man can experience.
-Leo Tolstoy
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What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.
-Leo Tolstoy
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Government
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In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.
-Leo Tolstoy
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Greatness & Great Things
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In historic events, the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself. Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of history and predestined from eternity.
-Leo Tolstoy
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There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are absent.
-Leo Tolstoy
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History
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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.
-Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, Epilogue, Part II, Chapter 1.
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Humanity
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Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.
-Leo Tolstoy
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Hypocrisy
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Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.
-Leo Tolstoy
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Kisses
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The sobs and tears of joy he had not foreseen rose with such force within him that his whole body shook and for a long time prevented him from speaking. Falling on his knees by her bed. He held his wife's hand to his lips and kissed it, and her hand responded to his kisses with weak movement of finger. Meanwhile, at the foot of the bed, in the midwife's expert hands, like the flame of a lamp, flickered the life of a human being who had never existed before...
-Leo Tolstoy
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Law
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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
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Books by and about Leo Tolstoy