Leo Tolstoy Quotes on Love
Love stands at the moral centre of Tolstoy's writing, and the quotes gathered here, drawn from the novels and the later religious works, show its many aspects. In War and Peace love appears as the only reality in the world, the one thing worth seizing, and Tolstoy ties love to understanding itself, for all that he understands, he understands only because he loves. His parable What Men Live By reaches the conclusion that what dwells in every person is love, and that to love life is to love God. In his later Christian anarchism love becomes a political principle as well: identified with meekness and non-resistance, it stands opposed to the violence Tolstoy saw as the essence of government. For Tolstoy, love is at once knowledge, the meaning of life, and the law of right conduct.
Quotes
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“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему. -
“All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.”
Thoughts of Prince Andrew Bk XII, Ch. 16 -
“The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.”
Sevastopol in May (1855), Ch. 16 -
“Where Love Is, God Is " (1885), also translated as "Where Love is, There God is Also" - (full text online)”
Martin's soul grew very very glad. He crossed himself put on his spectacles, and began reading the Gospel just where it had opened; and at the top of the page he read: I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in. And at the bottom of the page he read: Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren even these least, ye did it -
“Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.”
War and Peace(1865–1867; 1869) | Book IV, Ch. 11 -
“To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved sufferings.”
War and Peace(1865–1867; 1869) | Bk. XIV, ch. 15 -
“When the woman showed her love for the children that were not her own, and wept over them, I saw in her the living God, and understood What men live by .”
What Men Live By(1881) | Ch. XI -
“Then I remembered the first lesson God had set me: "Learn what dwells in man." And I understood that in man dwells Love! I was glad that God had already begun to show me what He had promised, and I smiled for the first time.”
What Men Live By(1881) | Ch. XI -
“Government is violence, Christianity is meekness, non-resistance, love. And, therefore, government cannot be Christian, and a man who wishes to be a Christian must not serve government.”
Letter to Dr. Eugen Heinrich Schmitt (October 12, 1896), translated by Nathan Haskell Dole