Art begins when a man, with a purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs.
Leo TolstoyRead
If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that if individuals were truly committed to their beliefs without aggression towards others, conflict would cease.
Leo Tolstoy's statement reflects the idea that conflicts arise not from the existence of differing convictions but from the way people engage with those differences. If everyone were to advocate for their beliefs through peaceful means rather than hostility, the world could potentially achieve harmony and understanding rather than warfare and strife.
Themes
PeaceConvictionsUnderstandingConflictWar
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about conflict resolution in communities.
More from Leo Tolstoy
All quotes →Pierre looked into the sky, into the depths of the retreating, twinkling stars. "And all this is mine, and all this is in me, and all this is me!" thought Pierre. "And all this they've caught and put in a shed and boarded it up!
Leo TolstoyRead
People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing-refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.
Leo TolstoyRead
It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else's mistakes.
Leo TolstoyRead
Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man in music, and in that is its power and significance.
Leo TolstoyRead
A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.
Leo TolstoyRead
Similar quotes
I died from a mineral and plant became, Died from the plant, took a sentient frame; Died from the beast, donned a human dress - When by my dying did I ever grow less.
RumiRead
What is common to many is least taken care of, for all men have greater regard for what is their own than what they possess in common with others.
AristotleRead
One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something.
Henry David ThoreauRead
It struck me as I listened to those two men that a truer nomination (name) for our species than Homo sapiens might be Homo narrans, the storytelling person. What differentiates us from animals is the fact that we can listen to other people’s dreams, fears, joys, sorrows, desires and defeats–and they in turn can listen to ours.
Henning MankellRead
In the alluvial sweep of the land, I thought I could see the past and the present and the future all at once, as though time were not sequential in nature but took place without a beginning or an end, like a flash of green light rippling outward from the center of creation, not unlike a dream inside the mind of God.
James Lee BurkeRead
No one is so completely disenchanted with the world, or knows it so thoroughly, or is so utterly disgusted with it, that when it begins to smile upon him he does not become partially reconciled to it.
Giacomo LeopardiRead