Lev Nikolajevič Tolstoj: Citáty v angličtine (page 18)

Lev Nikolajevič Tolstoj bol ruský spisovateľ. Citáty v angličtine.
Lev Nikolajevič Tolstoj: 689   citátov 1379   Páči sa

“The appreciation of the merits of art (of the emotions it conveys) depends upon an understanding of the meaning of life, what is seen as good and evil. Good and evil are defined by religions.”

Help us translate this quote
Leo Tolstoy

What is Art? (1897)

“Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.”

Help us translate this quote
Leo Tolstoy kniha War and Peace

Bk. X, ch. 16
War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869)

“We cannot pretend that we do not see the armed policeman who marches up and down beneath our window to guarantee our security while we eat our luxurious dinner, or look at the new piece at the theater, or that we are unaware of the existence of the soldiers who will make their appearance with guns and cartridges directly our property is attacked.
We know very well that we are only allowed to go on eating our dinner, to finish seeing the new play, or to enjoy to the end the ball, the Christmas fete, the promenade, the races or, the hunt, thanks to the policeman's revolver or the soldier's rifle, which will shoot down the famished outcast who has been robbed of his share, and who looks round the corner with covetous eyes at our pleasures, ready to interrupt them instantly, were not policeman and soldier there prepared to run up at our first call for help.
And therefore just as a brigand caught in broad daylight in the act cannot persuade us that he did not lift his knife in order to rob his victim of his purse, and had no thought of killing him, we too, it would seem, cannot persuade ourselves or others that the soldiers and policemen around us are not to guard us, but only for defense against foreign foes, and to regulate traffic and fetes and reviews; we cannot persuade ourselves and others that we do not know that the men do not like dying of hunger, bereft of the right to gain their subsistence from the earth on which they live; that they do not like working underground, in the water, or in the stifling heat, for ten to fourteen hours a day, at night in factories to manufacture objects for our pleasure. One would imagine it impossible to deny what is so obvious. Yet it is denied.”

Help us translate this quote
Leo Tolstoy

Zdroj: The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894), Chapter 12

“The error arises from the learned jurists deceiving themselves and others, by asserting that government is not what it really is, one set of men banded together to oppress another set of men, but, as shown by science, is the representation of the citizens in their collective capacity.”

Help us translate this quote
Leo Tolstoy

The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894)
Varianta: Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.

“The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people.”

Help us translate this quote
Leo Tolstoy

What Is To Be Done? (1886) Chap. XL, as translated in The Novels and Other Works of Lyof N. Tolstoï (1902) edited by Nathan Haskell Dole, p. 281

“Wealth is a great sin in the eyes of God. Poverty is a great sin in the eyes of man.”

Help us translate this quote
Leo Tolstoy

Zdroj: Path of Life (1909), p. 86

“What are wanted for the Indian as for the Englishman, the Frenchman, the German, and the Russian, are not Constitutions and Revolutions, nor all sorts of Conferences and Congresses, nor the many ingenious devices for submarine navigation and aerial navigation, nor powerful explosives, nor all sorts of conveniences to add to the enjoyment of the rich, ruling classes; nor new schools and universities with innumerable faculties of science, nor an augmentation of papers and books, nor gramophones and cinematographs, nor those childish and for the most part corrupt stupidities termed art — but one thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth which finds place in every soul that is not stupefied by religious and scientific superstitions — the truth that for our life one law is valid — the law of love, which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind. Free your minds from those overgrown, mountainous imbecilities which hinder your recognition of it, and at once the truth will emerge from amid the pseudo-religious nonsense that has been smothering it: the indubitable, eternal truth inherent in man, which is one and the same in all the great religions of the world. It will in due time emerge and make its way to general recognition, and the nonsense that has obscured it will disappear of itself, and with it will go the evil from which humanity now suffers.”

Help us translate this quote
Leo Tolstoy A Letter to a Hindu

A Letter to a Hindu (1908)

“Unfortunately not only were the rulers, who were considered supernatural beings, benefited by having the peoples in subjection, but as a result of the belief in, and during the rule of, these pseudodivine beings, ever larger and larger circles of people grouped and established themselves around them, and under an appearance of governing took advantage of the people. And when the old deception of a supernatural and God-appointed authority had dwindled away these men were only concerned to devise a new one which like its predecessor should make it possible to hold the people in bondage to a limited number of rulers.”

Help us translate this quote
Leo Tolstoy A Letter to a Hindu

Zdroj: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), III

“Saying that what we call our “selves” consist only of our bodies and that reason, soul, and love arise only from the body, is like saying that what we call our body is equivalent to the food that feeds the body. It is true that my body is only made up of digested food and that my body would not exist without food, but my body is not the same as food. Food is what the body needs for life, but it is not the body itself. The same thing is true of my soul. It is true that without my body there would not be that which I call my soul, but my soul is not my body. The soul may need the body, but the body is not the soul.”

Help us translate this quote
Leo Tolstoy

Zdroj: Path of Life (1909), p. 12

“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.”

Help us translate this quote
Leo Tolstoy

What is Art? (1897)

“Is not the reason of the confidence of the positive, critical, experimental scientists, and of the reverent attitude of the crowd towards their doctrines, still the same? At first it seems strange how the theory of evolution (which, like the redemption in theology, serves the majority as a popular expression of the whole new creed) can justify people in their injustice, and it seems as if the scientific theory dealt only with facts and did nothing but observe facts. But that only seems so. It seemed just the same in the case of theological doctrine: theology, it seemed, was only occupied with dogmas and had no relation to people's lives, and it seemed the same with regard to philosophy, which appeared to be occupied solely with transcendental reasonings. But that only seemed so. It was just the same with the Hegelian doctrine on a large scale and with the particular case of the Malthusian teaching.”

Help us translate this quote
Leo Tolstoy

What then must we do? (1886)

“Giving alms is only a virtuous deed when you give money that you yourself worked to get.”

Help us translate this quote
Leo Tolstoy

Zdroj: Path of Life (1909), p. 83

“Understand then all of you, especially the young, that to want to impose an imaginary state of government on others by violence is not only a vulgar superstition, but even a criminal work. Understand that this work, far from assuring the well-being of humanity is only a lie, a more or less unconscious hypocrisy, camouflaging the lowest passions we posses.”

Help us translate this quote
Leo Tolstoy

Passage written for for The Law of Love and the Law of Violence (1908), released in 1917, as quoted in Equality in Liberty and Justice (2001) by Antony Flew, p. 89

“I know that most men — not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic, problems — can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty — conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives.”

Help us translate this quote
Leo Tolstoy

Opening to Ch 14. Translation from: What Is Art and Essays on Art (Oxford University Press, 1930, trans. Aylmer Maude)
As quoted by physicist Joseph Ford in Chaotic Dynamics and Fractals (1985) edited by Michael Fielding Barnsley and Stephen G. Demko
What is Art? (1897)
Varianta: I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.

“Six feet of land was all that he needed.”

Help us translate this quote
Leo Tolstoy kniha How Much Land Does a Man Need?

How Much Land Does a Man Need? (1886)

“There was something in her higher than what surrounded her. There was in her the glow of the real diamond among glass imitations. This glow shone out in her exquisite, truly enigmatic eyes. The weary, and at the same time passionate, glance of those eyes, encircled by dark rings, impressed one by its perfect sincerity. Everyone looking into those eyes fancied he knew her wholly, and knowing her, could not but love her.”

Help us translate this quote
Leo Tolstoy kniha Anna Karenina

Anna’s thoughts about Liza, Part III, Chapter 13
Anna Karenina (1875–1877; 1878)

“At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding it; the other even more reasonable says that it is too painful and harassing to think of the danger, since it is not a man's power to provide for everything and escape from the general march of events; and that it is therefore better to turn aside from the painful subject till it has come, and to think of what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally yields to the first voice; in society to the second.”

Help us translate this quote
Leo Tolstoy kniha War and Peace

Bk. X, ch. 17
War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869)

“In life, in true life, there can be nothing better than what is. Wanting something different than what is, is blasphemy.”

Help us translate this quote
Leo Tolstoy

Zdroj: Path of Life (1909), p. 209

“The difference between him as he was then and as he was now was great … Then he was a courageous, free man, before whom opened endless possibilities; now he felt himself caught in the tenets of a stupid, idle, aimless, miserable life, from which there was no escape; aye, from which, for the most part, he would not escape. He remembered how he once had prided himself upon his rectitude; how he always made it a rule to tell the truth, and was in reality truthful, and how he was now steeped in falsehood—falsehood which was recognized as truth by all those around him.”

Help us translate this quote
Leo Tolstoy kniha Resurrection

Zdroj: Resurrection (1899), Ch. 28

“Having acknowledged the measure of the good to be pleasure, i. e., beauty, the European upper classes went back in their comprehension of art to the gross conception of the primitive Greeks which Plato had already condemned. And with this understanding of life, a theory of art was formulated.”

Help us translate this quote
Leo Tolstoy

What is Art? (1897)