Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

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.

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.

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.

War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.

If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one’s reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state.

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.

The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.