Leon Tolstoy died on a day like today in 1910. Considered one of the great writers of history, overwhelming personality and great defender of the philosophy of non-violence, besides being a convinced vegetarian and anarchist. Possibly next to Fyodor Dostoyevsky, is the quintessential Russian novelist, with titles like War and peace o Ana Karenina. To remember it there they go 25 chosen phrases of his thought and work.
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy
Born into a aristocratic family, Tolstoy got his first great literary success in his early twenties with a semi-autobiographical trilogy titled Childhood, childhood and youth y Sevastopol stories, based on his experiences during the Crimean War. His work of fiction also includes short stories and several short novels as The death of Ivan Ilyich, Family happiness o Hadji murad (already posthumous). He also wrote theater and many philosophical essays, the fruit of the influence of French Jean Jacques Rosseau.
Other titles were The Cossacks, Polikushka, Two hussars, Confession, The Kingdom of God is in You or Resurrection. But without a doubt their summit works were Guerra y paz, the great epic of the invasion of Russia by Napoleon in 1812, and Ana Karenina, both published in installments at first and also adapted for film and television on many occasions.
25 phrases of Tolstoy
About love, politics, philosophy, religion or writing.
- Money is a new form of slavery, distinguished from the old only by the fact that it is impersonal, that there is no human relationship between master and slave.
- There is only one way to be happy: to live for others.
- My happiness is that I know how to appreciate what I have and I don't want too much what I don't have.
- I have to get used to the fact that no one will ever understand me. This should be the common destiny of difficult people.
- Before giving the people priests, soldiers and teachers, it would be opportune to know if they are not starving.
- When I think of all the evils that I have seen and suffered as a result of national hatreds, I tell myself that all this rests on a hateful lie: love of the country.
- The government is an association of men who exert violence on everyone else.
- I have understood that my well-being is only possible when I recognize my unity with all the people of the world, without exception.
- Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
- It is easier to write ten volumes of philosophical principles than to put into practice just one of its principles.
- There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are lacking.
- I believe that although it is true that there are as many minds as heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.
- If you want to be happy, be.
- All the variety, all the charm and all the beauty that exists in this world is made of light and shadow.
- I have understood that my well-being is only possible when I recognize my unity with all the people of the world, without exception.
- The two most powerful warriors you can count on are patience and time.
- Ambition does not go well with goodness, but with pride, cunning and cruelty.
- No ingratitude closes a great heart, no indifference tires it.
- Everything I know I know because I love.
- Respect was invented to fill the void that love must fill.
- When you love a person, you love the person they are, and not the person you would like them to be.
- He who has known only his wife and has loved her knows more about women than he who has known a thousand.
- Writing a good book throughout your life is more than enough. And also read one.
- The best stories do not come from good against bad, but from good against good.
- All works, to be good, must spring from the soul of the author.