Tolstoy Pacifism Quotes

All the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class included all the girls in the world except her, and they had all the usual human feelings and were very ordinary girls; while the other class -herself alone- had no weaknesses and was superior to all humanity. ~ Leo Tolstoy

The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless. ~ Leo Tolstoy

One need only admit the premise that public peace of mind is in danger and any action finds justification. All the horrors of the Reign of Terror in France were based entirely on solicitude for public tranquillity. ~ Leo Tolstoy

As is so often the case, was not so much annoyed at the fact itself as at the way in which he had met his wife's words. ~ Leo Tolstoy

He had lived (without being aware of it) on those spiritual truths that he had sucked in with his mother's milk, but he had thought, not merely without recognition of these truths, but studiously ignoring them. ~ Leo Tolstoy

But the peasants - how do the peasants die? ~ Leo Tolstoy

I cannot stand Tolstoy, and reading him was the most boring literary duty I ever had to perform, his philosophy and his sense of life are not merely mistaken, but evil, and yet, from a purely literary viewpoint, on his own terms, I have to evaluate him as a good writer. ~ Ayn Rand

I know fiery horses by their brand, and I know young people who are in love by their eyes ~ Leo Tolstoy

We must begin to inculcate our children against militarism by educating them in the spirit of pacifism. Our schoolbooks glorify war and conceal it's horror. I would teach peace rather than war. ~ Albert Einstein

If only the comfortable prosperity of the Victorian age hadn't lulled us into a false conviction of individual security and made us believe that what was going on outside our homes didn't matter to us, the Great War might never have happened. ~ Vera Brittain

Life seemed to Prince Andrey a series of senseless phenomena following one another without any connection. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Why am I going?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. "You know that I am going in order to be where you are," said he. "I cannot do otherwise."
"Not a word, not a movement of yours will I ever forget, nor can I ... ~ Leo Tolstoy

The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days. The children ran wild all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper, and wrote ~ Leo Tolstoy

An artist must know the reality he is depicting in its minutest detail. In my opinion we have only one shining example of that - Count Leo Tolstoy. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

So on receiving the news of Ivan Ilych's death the first thought of each of the gentlemen in that private room was of the changes and promotions it might occasion among themselves ~ Leo Tolstoy

But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable. ~ Leo Tolstoy

You need feeling, emotion, to create. You can't create out of indifference. ~ Leo Tolstoy

By far the easiest grounds for gaining conscientious objector status in wartime are religious. You can be a brilliant moral philosopher with a prize-winning doctoral thesis expounding the evils of war, and still be given a hard time by a draft board evaluating your claim to be a conscientious objector. Yet if you can say that one or both of your parents is a Quaker you sail through like a breeze, no matter how inarticulate and illiterate you may be on the theory of pacifism or, indeed, Quakerism itself. ~ Richard Dawkins

You can't understand it; for you men, who are free and make your own choice, it's always clear whom you love. But a girl's in a position of suspense, with all a woman's or maiden's modesty, a girl who sees you men from afar, who takes everything on trust, - a girl may have, and often has, such a feeling that she cannot tell what to say. ~ Leo Tolstoy

A man cannot get rid of the responsibility, for his own actions. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Prices too that day indicated the state of affairs. The price of weapons, of gold, of carts and horses, kept rising, but the value of paper money and city articles kept falling, so that by midday there were instances of carters removing valuable goods, such as cloth, and receiving in payment a half of what they carted, while peasant horses were fetching five hundred rubles each, and furniture, mirrors, and bronzes were being given away for nothing. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Often a man goes on for years imaging that the religious teaching that had been imparted to him since childhood is still intact, while all the time there is not a trace of it left in him. ~ Leo Tolstoy

The Bible is clear here: I am to love my neighbor as myself, in the manner needed, in a practical way, in the midst of the fallen world, at my particular point of history. This is why I am not a pacifist. Pacifism in this poor world in which we live
this lost world
means that we desert the people who need our greatest help. ~ Francis A. Schaeffer

Can it be that I have overlooked something, that there is something which I have failed to understand? Is it not possible that this state of despair is common to everyone? ~ Leo Tolstoy

I feel that I am entitled to my share of lightheartedness and there is nothing wrong with enjoying one's self simply, like a boy. ~ Leo Tolstoy

I recognize limitations in the sense that I've read Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and Shakespeare ... Aside from that I don't think of limiting myself. ~ Francoise Sagan

«But you are talking of physical love. Do you not admit a love based upon a conformity of ideals, on a spiritual affinity?»

«Why not? But in that case it is not necessary to procreate together (excuse my brutality).» ~ Leo Tolstoy

And so there was no single cause for war, but it happened simply because it had to happen ~ Leo Tolstoy

If Mormonism is able to endure, unmodified, until it reaches the third and fourth generation, it is destined to become the greatest power the world has ever known. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Her glance, the touch of her hand, set him aflame. He kissed the palm of his hand where she had touched it, and went home, happy in the sense that he had got nearer to the attainment of his aims that evening ... ~ Leo Tolstoy

At one time, a freethinker was a man who had been brought up in the conceptions of religion, law and morality, who reached freethought only after conflict and difficulty. But now a new type of born freethinkers has appeared, who grow up without so much as hearing that there used to be laws of morality, or religion, that authorities existed ... In the old days, you see, if a man - a Frenchman, for instance- wished to get an education, he would have set to work to study the classics, the theologians, the tragedians, historians and philosophers- and you can realize all the intellectual labour involved. But nowadays he goes straight for the literature of negation, rapidly assimilates the essence of the science of negation, and thinks he's finished. ~ Leo Tolstoy

The only happy marriages I know are arranged ones. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Condemn me if you choose I do that myself, but condemn me , and not the path which I am following, and which I point out to those who ask me where, in my opinion, the path is. ~ Leo Tolstoy

I've enough pride never to let myself love a man who does not love me. ~ Leo Tolstoy

A Frenchman is self-assured because he considers himself personally, in mind as well as body, irresistibly enchanting for men as well as women. An Englishman is self-assured on the grounds that he is a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore, as an Englishman, he always knows what he must do, and knows that everything he does as an Englishman is unquestionably good. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and others. A Russian is self-assured precisely because he does not know anything and does not want to know anything, because he does not believe it possible to know anything fully. A German is self-assured worst of all, and most firmly of all, and most disgustingly of all, because he imagines that he knows the truth, science, which he has invented himself, but which for him is the absolute truth. ~ Leo Tolstoy

With 6 children Darya Alexandrovna could not be calm. One got sick, another might get sick, a third lacked something, a fourth showed signs of bad character, and so on, and so on. Rarely, rarely would there be short periods of calm but these troubles and anxieties were for Darya Alexandroyna the only possible happiness. Had it not been for them, she would have remained alone with her thoughts of her husband, who did not love her. But besides that, however painful the mother's fear of illnesses, the illnesses themselves, and the distress at seeing signs of bad inclinations in her children, the children themselves repaid her griefs with small joys. These joys were so small that they could not be seen, like gold in the sand, and in her bad moments she saw only griefs, only sand; but there were also good moments, when she saw only joys, only gold.
Now, in her country solitude, she was more aware of these joys. Often, looking at them, she made every possible effort to convince herself that she was mistaken, that as a mother she was partial to her children; all the same, she could not but tell herself that she had lovely children, all 6 of them, each in a different way, but such as rarely happens - and she was happy in them in them and proud of them. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Every reform by violence is to be deprecated, because it does little to correct the evil while men remain as they are, and because wisdom has no need of violence. ~ Leo Tolstoy

So long as atrocities remain remote, abstract, they will be tolerated, even by decent people. ~ Howard Zinn

It is in the mountains that the eagles dwell ~ Leo Tolstoy

But I am alive still. Now what's to be done? what's to be done? he said in despair. ~ Leo Tolstoy

A free thinker used to be a man who had been educated on ideas of religion, law, morality, and had arrived at free thought by virtue of his own struggle and toil; but now a new type of born freethinker has been appearing, who've never even heard that there have been laws of morality and religion, and that there are authorities, but who simply grow up with negative ideas about everything, that is savages. ~ Leo Tolstoy

The greatest human achievement is love. ~ Leo Tolstoy