What Leo Tolstoy thinks about religion
Russian novelist and moral philosopher (1828 to 1910); author of War and Peace and The Kingdom of God Is Within You.
Leo Tolstoy did not write this page.
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3 dated positions, c. 1893–1894 to c. 1897–1898, in their own words. Our reading of what Leo Tolstoy has said — not written or endorsed by them.
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Their wordsIn every age, and in every human society, there exists a religious sense, common to that whole society, of what is good and what is bad, and it is this religious conception that decides the value of the feelings transmitted by art.
↗What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsBut if art is an important matter, a spiritual blessing, essential for all men (“like religion,” as the devotees of art are fond of saying), then it should be accessible to everyone. And if, as in our day, it is not accessible to all men, then one of two things: either art is not the vital matter it is represented to be, or that art which we call art is not the real thing.
↗What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsIn precisely the same way the Christian doctrine is presented to men of the social or heathen theory of life to-day, in the guise of a supernatural religion, though there is in reality nothing mysterious, mystic, or supernatural about it.
↗The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book