Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me... I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot my all possible means - except by getting off his back.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. 

In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs and other heads of states.

Christian love comes from the understanding that there is a unity of divine origins in oneself and in other people, and not only in people, but in all living things.

Today, nobody sees, or wishes to see, that in our time the enslavement of the majority of men is based on money taxes, levied on land and otherwise, which are collected by government from the subjects.

He saw either death or the approach of it everywhere. But his undertaking now occupied him all the more. He had to live his life to the end, until death came. Darkness covered everything for him; but precisely because of this darkness he felt his undertaking was the only guiding thread in this darkness, and he seized it and held on to it with all his remaining strength.

Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal - that there is no human relation between master and slave.

I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.

I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.

I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.