9 Leo Tolstoy Quotes on Meaning

Leo Tolstoy quotes on meaning

4. Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.

9. The happiness of men consists in life. And life is in labor.

19. 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.

27. He did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart from their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation of an activity unknown to him, which was his life.

30. 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.

47. Several times I asked myself, 'Can it be that I have overlooked something, that there is something which I have failed to understand? Is it not possible that this state of despair is common to everyone?' And I searched for an answer to my questions in every area of knowledge acquired by man. For a long time I carried on my painstaking search; I did not search casually, out of mere curiosity, but painfully, persistently, day and night, like a dying man seeking salvation. I found nothing.

68. No longer able to believe in the Church religion, whose falsehood they had detected, and incapable of accepting true Christian teaching, which denounced their whole manner of life, these rich and powerful people, stranded without any religious conception of life, involuntarily returned to that pagan view of things which places life's meaning in personal enjoyment. And then among the upper classes what is called the 'Renaissance of science and art' took place, which was really not only a denial of every religion, but also an assertion that religion was unnecessary.

128. The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.

138. To seek, always to seek... (Tolstoy's final words).