The Law of Love and the Law of Violence Quotes

“The most important acts, both for the one who accomplishes them and for his fellow creatures, are those that have remote consequences.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Law of Love and the Law of Violence

“Love, true love, love that denies itself and transfers itself to another, is the awakening within oneself of the highest universal principle of life. But it is only true love that affords all the happiness it can give when it is simply love, free from anything personal, from the smallest drop of personal bias towards its object. And such love can only be felt for one's enemy, for those who hate and offend.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Law of Love and the Law of Violence

“The more people you murder, the smaller the chance of saving yourselves from your chief enemy: the hatred people feel towards you.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Law of Love and the Law of Violence

“The most important and necessary work both for the man performing it and for others is that of which he does not see the results.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Law of Love and the Law of Violence

“It is neither resolutions, nor the subtle, clever Socialist and Communist structures of unisons, arbitrations, etc, that will serve mankind, but only when this spiritual awareness becomes general.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Law of Love and the Law of Violence

“All external changes of life's forms that are not founded on shifts in consciousness not only fail to improve people's situation but, by and large, worsen it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Law of Love and the Law of Violence

“What could be more natural than this? And yet, the working people, more especially the agricultural workers for whom none of it is necessary, do not do so, either in Russia or in any other country in the world. Some of them, the majority, continue to torment themselves, fulfilling government demands that run counter to their own needs by becoming policemen, tax collectors or soldiers; while the others, the minority, trying to escape violence, inflict it, at any given revolutionary opportunity, on those from whose violence they suffer; in other words, they stifle fire with fire, and only achieve an increase in the violence used against themselves.
Why do people act so irrationally?
Because, as a result of the perpetuated deception, they can no longer see the connection between their oppression and their participation in violence.
Why do they not see the connection?
For the same reason that accounts for all human misery: because they lack faith and without faith people can only be guided by self-interest, and men guided only by self-interest cannot do otherwise than deceive or be deceived.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Law of Love and the Law of Violence

“Violence produces something only resembling justice, but it distances people from the possibility of living justly, without violence.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Law of Love and the Law of Violence

“The glory of the good lies in their consciences and not in the mouths of other people.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Law of Love and the Law of Violence