Leo Tolstoy on Memorial Day
1828–1910 Russia
← All quotes by Leo Tolstoy
6 quotes
All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.
The Law of Love and the Law of Violence (1908)
Our soul’s perfection is our life’s purpose; any other purpose, keeping death in mind, has no substance.
Those who are lighthearted remind me of death.
As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence — as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual.
A Letter to a Hindu (1908)
The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter’s Logic: “Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal,” had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius—man in the abstract—was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others.
Memento mori—remember death! These are important words. If we kept in mind that we will soon inevitably die, our lives would be completely different. If a person knows that he will die in a half hour, he certainly will not bother doing trivial, stupid, or, especially, bad things during this half hour. Perhaps you have half a century before you die—what makes this any different from a half hour?