Leo Tolstoy/Quotes

"If one has no vanity in this life of ours, there is no sufficient reason for living."

- Pozdnyshev, The Kreutzer Sonata

"Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it."

- Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

"Every author is surrounded by an aura of adulation which he nurses so assiduously that he cannot begin to judge his own worth or see when it starts to decline."

- Leo Tolstoy, in a letter to Nikolay Strakhov

"All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town."

- Leo Tolstoy

"I know that most men — not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic, problems — can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty — conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives."

- Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art and Essays on Art

"The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good."

- Leo Tolstoy

"If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you."

- Leo Tolstoy, Essays, Letters and Miscellanies

"There can be only one permanent revolution — a moral one; the regeneration of the inner man. How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself."

- Leo Tolstoy, Three Methods Of Reform

"I sit on a man's back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back."

- Leo Tolstoy, Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence