|
Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.
LEO TOLSTOY, War and Peace
Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
LEO TOLSTOY, What is Art?
Art is a microscope which the artist fixes on the secrets of his soul, and shows to people these secrets which are common to all.
Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.
LEO TOLSTOY, War and Peace
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 all possible means -- except by getting off his back.
LEO TOLSTOY, What Then Must We Do?
In order to obtain and hold power, a man must love it.
LEO TOLSTOY, The Kingdom of God Is Within You
At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding it; the other even more reasonable says that it is too painful and harassing to think of the danger, since it is not a man's power to provide for everything and escape from the general march of events; and that it is therefore better to turn aside from the painful subject till it has come, and to think of what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally yields to the first voice; in society to the second.
LEO TOLSTOY, War and Peace
A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.
LEO TOLSTOY, On Civil Disobedience
If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.
LEO TOLSTOY, The First Step
Teach French and unteach sincerity.
LEO TOLSTOY, Anna Karenina
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
LEO TOLSTOY, The Kreutzer Sonata
In historical events great men—so-called—are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.
LEO TOLSTOY, War and Peace
God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part.
All happy families resemble each other, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
LEO TOLSTOY, Anna Karenina
The strongest of all warriors are these two -- Time and Patience.
LEO TOLSTOY, War and Peace
Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.
LEO TOLSTOY, What Is Art?
Great works of art are only great because they are accessible and comprehensible to everyone.
LEO TOLSTOY, What Is Art?
Real art, like the wife of an affectionate husband, needs no ornaments. But counterfeit art, like a prostitute, must always be decked out. The cause of production of real art is the artist's inner need to express a feeling that has accumulated, just as for a mother the cause of sexual conception is love. The cause of counterfeit art, as of prostitution, is gain. The consequence of true art is the introduction of a new feeling into the intercourse of life, as the consequence of a wife's love is the birth of a new man into life. The consequences of counterfeit art are the perversion of man, pleasure which never satisfies, and the weakening of man's spiritual strength.
LEO TOLSTOY, What Is Art?
Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective, of nature with reason, of the unconscious with the conscious, and therefore art is the highest means of knowledge.
LEO TOLSTOY, What Is Art?
In our day the feeling of patriotism is an unnatural, irrational, and harmful feeling, and a cause of a great part of the ills from which mankind is suffering; and ... consequently, this feeling should not be cultivated, as is now being done, but should, on the contrary, be suppressed and eradicated by all means available to rational men.
LEO TOLSTOY, Essays and Letters
The idea of beauty is the fundamental idea of everything. In the world we see only distortions of the fundamental idea, but art, by imagination, may lift itself to the height of this idea. Art is therefore akin to creation.
LEO TOLSTOY, What Is Art?
By patriotism is meant, not only spontaneous, instinctive love for one's own nation, and preference for it above all other nations, but also the belief that such love and preference are good and useful.
LEO TOLSTOY, letter to a Polish journalist, Sept. 1895
Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and that movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in consciousness of the divine. To love life is to love God.
LEO TOLSTOY, War and Peace
Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most undoubted meaning is for rulers nothing else but a means of realizing their ambitions and venal ends; for the governed it is a renouncing of human dignity, intelligence, and conscience, and a slavish submission to the rulers. Wherever patriotism is championed, it is preached invariably in that shape. Patriotism is slavery.
LEO TOLSTOY, The Open Court, Jul. 16, 1896
|
