Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy; 9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910), usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth28 August 1828
CountryRussian Federation
simplicity genius
There is no genius where there is not simplicity.
men yesterday majority
And that which yesterday was the novel opinion of one man, to-day becomes the general opinion of the majority.
power expression execution
Power, from the standpoint of experience, is merely the relation that exists between the expression of someone's will and the execution of that will by others.
military army chiefs
The chief attraction of military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness.
war play things-in-life
War is not a polite recreation but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that and not play at war.
lying demand physicians
This is where the strength of the physician lies, be he a quack, a homeopath or an allopath. He supplies the perennial demand for comfort, the craving for sympathy that every human sufferer feels.
express-yourself should i-can
When you say, 'I can’t do that,' you're expressing yourself incorrectly. You should say, 'I couldn’t do that before.'
people honest force
Since corrupt people unite amongst themselves to constitute a force, then honest people must do the same.
purpose life-is goodness
The purpose of life is to bring forth goodness. Now, in this life.
art men people
If people lacked the capacity to receive the thoughts of the men who preceded them and to pass on to others their own thoughts, men would be like wild beasts. And if men lacked this other capacity of being infected by art, people would be almost more savage still, and, above all, more separated from and more hostile to one another. Therefore the activity of art is a most important one, as important as the activity of speech itself and as generally diffused.
people terrible knowing-god
It is terrible when people do not know God, but it is worse when people identify as God what is not God.
violence renounce obliged
I am obliged to renounce violence, and abstain from it altogether.
fear lines terrible
There lay between them, separating them, that same terrible line of the unknown and of fear, like the line separating the living from the dead.
art mean men
Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship both with him who produced the art, and with all those who, simultaneously, previously, or subsequently, receive the same artistic impression. Art is a human activity- that one man consciously by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that others are touched by these feelings and also experience them.