Leo Tolstoy

“As if tears were the necessary lubricant without which the machine of mutual communication could not work successfully, the two sisters, after these tears, started talking, not about what pr...”

“If there were no suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself.”

“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”

“I suffered most from the feeling that custom was daily petrifying our lives into one fixed shape, that our minds were losing their freedom and becoming enslaved to the steady passionless cou...”

“Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it.”

“It was long before I could believe that human learning had no clear answer to this question. For a long time it seemed to me, as I listened to the gravity and seriousness wherewith Science a...”

“Where there has been true science, art has always been its exponent.”

“You were the first to demonstrate beyond question by your experience that man is man everywhere, that is, a kind, sociable being with whom communication can and should be established through...”

“To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.”

“As his father saw it, he did not want to learn what was taught. But in fact, he could not learn it. He could not, because there were demands in his soul that were more exacting for him than...”

“Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.”

“Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.”

“And all people live, Not by reason of any care they have for themselves, But by the love for them that is in other people.”

“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.”

“Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.”

“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.”

“An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life - becoming a better person.”

“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.”

“War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it.”

“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 o...”