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“Furthermore I said to myself, the essence of every faith consists in its giving life a meaning which death does not destroy.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“The only mistake was that the answer referred only to my life, while I had referred it to life in general”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“were there no life, my reason would not exist; therefore reason is life's son. Life is all. Reason is its fruit yet reason rejects life itself! I felt that there was something wrong here.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“Then as now, the public profession and confession of orthodoxy was chiefly met with among people who were dull and cruel and who considered themselves very important. Ability, honesty, reliability, good-nature and moral conduct, were often met with among unbelievers.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“Imagine and executioner who has spent all his life torturing people and chopping off heads, or a hopeless drunkard, or a madman who has spent his entire life in a dark room which he detests but imagines that he would die if he left it—imagine if they should ask themselves, 'What is life?' Obviously the only answer they could come up with is that life is the greatest of evils. The madman's answer would be obviously correct, but only with respect to himself. Suppose I am such a madman? Suppose all of us who are wealthy and learned are such madmen?”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“And I turned to the examination of that same theology which I had once rejected with such contempt as unnecessary. Formerly it seemed to me a series of unnecessary absurdities, when on all sides I was surrounded by manifestations of life which seemed to me clear and full of sense; now I should have been glad to throw away what would not enter a health head, but I had nowhere to turn to. On this teaching religious doctrine rests, or at least with it the only knowledge of the meaning of life that I have found is inseparably connected. However wild it may seem too my firm old mind, it was the only hope of salvation. It had to be carefully, attentively examined in order to understand it, and not even to understand it as I understand the propositions of science: I do not seek that, nor can I seek it, knowing the special character of religious knowledge. I shall not seek the explanation of everything. I know that the explanation of everything, like the commencement of everything, must be concealed in infinity. But I wish to understand in a way which will bring me to what is inevitably inexplicable. I wish to recognize anything that is inexplicable as being so not because the demands of my reason are wrong (they are right, and apart from them I can understand nothing), but because I recognize the limits of my intellect. I wish to understand in such a way that everything that is inexplicable shall present itself to me as being necessarily inexplicable, and not as being something I am under an arbitrary obligation to believe.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“And strange to say the strength of life which returned to me was not new, but quite old the same that had borne me along in my earliest days. I quite returned to what belonged to my earliest childhood and youth. I returned to the belief in that Will which produced me and desires something of me. I returned to the belief that the chief and only aim of my life is to be better, i.e. to live in accord with that Will, and I returned to the belief that I can find the expression of that Will in what humanity, in the distant past hidden from, has produced for its guidance: that is to say, I returned to a belief in God, in moral perfection, and in a tradition transmitting the meaning of life. There was only this difference, that then all this was accepted unconsciously, while now I knew that without it I could not live.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“I began to understand that in the replies given by faith is stored up the deepest human wisdom and that I had no right to deny them on the ground of reason, and that those answers are the only ones which reply to life's question.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“The conception of an infinite god, the divinity of the soul, the connection of human affairs with God, the unity and existence of the soul, man's conception of moral goodness and evil are conceptions formulated in the hidden infinity of human thought, they are those conceptions without which neither life nor I should exist; yet rejecting all that labour of the whole of humanity, I wished to remake it afresh myself and in my own manner.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“So that besides rational knowledge, which had seemed to me the only knowledge, I was inevitably brought to acknowledge that all live humanity has another irrational knowledge faith which makes it possible to live. Faith still remained to me as irrational as it was before, but I could not but admit that it alone gives mankind a reply to the questions of life, and that consequently it makes life possible.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“however irrational and distorted might be the replies given by faith, they have this advantage, that they introduce into every answer a relation between the finite and the infinite, without which there can be no solution.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“To remember that time, and my own state of mind and that of those men (though there are thousands like them today), is sad and terrible and ludicrous, and arouses exactly the feeling one experiences in a lunatic asylum. We were all then convinced that it was necessary for us to speak, write, and print as quickly as possible and as much as possible, and that it was all wanted for the good of humanity. And thousands of us, contradicting and abusing one another, all printed and wrote teaching others. And without noticing that we knew nothing, and that to the simplest of life's questions: What is good and what is evil? we did not know how to reply, we all talked at the same time, not listening to one another, sometimes seconding and praising one another in order to be seconded and praised in turn, sometimes getting angry with one another just as in a lunatic asylum. Thousands of workmen laboured to the extreme limit of their strength day and night, setting the type and printing millions of words which the post carried all over Russia, and we still went on teaching and could in no way find time to teach enough, and were always angry that sufficient attention was not paid us. It was terribly strange, but is now quite comprehensible. Our real innermost concern was to get as much money and praise as possible. To gain that end we could do nothing except write books and papers. So we did that. But in order to do such useless work and to feel assured that we were very important people we required a theory justifying our activity. And so among us this theory was devised: "All that exists is reasonable. All that exists develops. And it all develops by means of Culture. And Culture is measured by the circulation of books and newspapers. And we are paid money and are respected because we write books and newspapers, and therefore we are the most useful and the best of men." This theory would have been all very well if we had been unanimous, but as every thought expressed by one of us was always met by a diametrically opposite thought expressed by another, we ought to have been driven to reflection. But we ignored this; people paid us money and those on our side praised us, so each of us considered himself justified. It is now clear to me that this was just as in a lunatic asylum; but then I only dimly suspected this, and like all lunatics, simply called all men lunatics except myself.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“I felt that what I had been standing on had collapsed and that I had nothing left under my feet. What I had lived on no longer existed, and there was nothing left.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“Tako čine rijetki snažni i dosljedni ljudi. Shvativši svu glupost šale kojoj su oni predmet i shvativši da su blaga umrlih veća od blaga živih te da je najbolje od svega ne postojati, tako i čine te smjesta završavaju s tom glupom šalom kojim god sredstvom: omča oko vrata, voda, nož kojim probijaju srce, vlakovi na željezničkim prugama.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“to save his soul he must live “godly�� and to live “godly�� he must renounce all the pleasures of life, must labour, humble himself, suffer, and be merciful.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“what should a man do? He too should produce his living as the animals do, but with this difference, that he will perish if he does it alone; he must obtain it not for himself but for all.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“we see that life is an evil and yet continue to live. That is evidently stupid, for if life is senseless and I am so fond of what is reasonable, it should be destroyed,”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“faith is a knowledge of the meaning of human life in consequence of which man does not destroy himself but lives. Faith is the strength of life. If a man lives he believes in something. If he did not believe that one must live for something, he would not live. If he does not see and recognize the illusory nature of the finite, he believes in the finite; if he understands the illusory nature of the finite, he must believe in the infinite. Without faith he cannot live.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“I asked: “What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause, and space?�� And I replied to quite another question: “What is the meaning of my life within time, cause, and space?�� With the result that, after long efforts of thought, the answer I reached was: “None.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“The solution of all the possible questions of life could evidently not satisfy me, for my question, simple as it at first appeared, included a demand for an explanation of the finite in terms of the infinite, and vice versa.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“Rational knowledge presented by the learned and wise, denies the meaning of life, but the enormous masses of men, the whole of mankind receive that meaning in irrational knowledge. And that irrational knowledge is faith, that very thing which I could not but reject. It is God, One in Three; the creation in six days; the devils and angels, and all the rest that I cannot accept as long as I retain my reason.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“For our wisdom, however indubitable it may be, has not given us the knowledge of the meaning of our life. But all mankind who sustain life -- millions of them -- do not doubt the meaning of life.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“The third escape is that of strength and energy. It consists in destroying life, when one has understood that it is an evil and an absurdity.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“That is the way in which the majority of people of our circle make life possible for themselves. Their circumstances furnish them with more of welfare than of hardship, and their moral dullness makes it possible for them to forget that the advantage of their position is accidental,”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“The second way out is epicureanism. It consists, while knowing the hopelessness of life, in making use meanwhile of the advantages one has, disregarding the dragon and the mice, and licking the honey in the best way, especially if there is much of it within reach.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“From them I had nothing to learn -- one cannot cease to know what one does know.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“It is no good deceiving oneself. It is all -- vanity! Happy is he who has not been born: death is better than life, and one must free oneself from life.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“We approach truth only inasmuch as we depart from life��, said Socrates when preparing for death. “For what do we, who love truth, strive after in life? To free ourselves from the body, and from all the evil that is caused by the life of the body! If so, then how can we fail to be glad when death comes to us? “The wise man seeks death all his life and therefore death is not terrible to him.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“The world is something infinite and incomprehensible part of that incomprehensible 'all'.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession