4 Leo Tolstoy Quotes on Beauty

Leo Tolstoy quotes on beauty

1. 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.

55. In spite the mountains of books written about art, no precise definition of art has been constructed. And the reason for this is that the conception of art has been based on the conception of beauty.

75. The good is the everlasting, the pinnacle of our life. ...life is striving towards the good, toward God. The good is the most basic idea... an idea not definable by reason... yet is the postulate from which all else follows. But the beautiful... is just that which is pleasing. The idea of beauty is not an alignment to the good, but is its opposite, because for most part, the good aids in our victory over our predilections, while beauty is the motive of our predilections. The more we succumb to beauty, the further we are displaced from the good. ...the usual response is that there exists a moral and spiritual beauty... we mean simply the good. Spiritual beauty or the good, generally not only does not coincide with the typical meaning of beauty, it is its opposite.

76. Truth is... one approach to the attainment of the good, but in and of itself, it is neither the good nor the beautiful... Socrates, Pascal, and others regarded knowledge of the truth with regard to purposeless objects as incongruous with the good... [by] exposing deception, truth destroys illusion, which is the principle attribute of beauty.