It is easier to produce ten volumes of philosophical writing than to put one principle into practice.
Leo Tolstoy Quotes
Perfection is man’s primary motivation. If he is truthful, he will never be satisfied with himself.
Patriotism is a rude feeling because it is natural only to people standing on the lowest level of morality and expecting from other nations such outrages as they themselves are ready to inflict. It is a harmful feeling because it disturbs advantageous and joyous peaceful relations with other peoples, and above all produces that governmental […]
If patriotism is good, then Christianity, which gives peace, is an idle term, and the sooner this teaching is eradicated, the better. But if Christianity really gives peace, and we really want peace, patriotism is a survival from barbarous times, which must not be evoked… as we now do, but which must be eradicated by […]
I must say I conscientiously refrain from reading newspapers… and I consider it my duty to wean everybody from that pernicious habit. There’s a good old man sitting in Vorobyovka who smelts 2 or 3 pages of Schopenhauer in his brain and pours them out in Russian, has a game of billiards, kills a woodcock, […]
An agile but unintelligent and abnormal German, possessed of the mania of grandeur. (about Friedrich Nietzsche)
Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.
A man who considers himself master of his own destiny can never be humble because he insists that he has no obligations to anyone. The man who considers service to God to be the purpose of his life is always humble because he feels that he has not fulfilled his obligations.
The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.
In historic events, the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself. Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of history […]
