What do you think?
Rate this book
Death and the Meaning of Life: Selected Spiritual Writings of Lev Tolstoy
Lev Tolstoy, one of the greatest writers in world literature, is best known to English-language readers for his masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
Tolstoy, however, was an extremely prolific writer on many topics including spiritual themes. To better understand the Gospels he taught himself Greek and Hebrew. This book contains materials which present the essence of Tolstoy's beliefs on immortality, death, God, and the meaning of life.
Tolstoy, however, was an extremely prolific writer on many topics including spiritual themes. To better understand the Gospels he taught himself Greek and Hebrew. This book contains materials which present the essence of Tolstoy's beliefs on immortality, death, God, and the meaning of life.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1999
4 people are currently reading
32 people want to read
About the author
Leo Tolstoy
7,108 books28.8k followersLev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой; most appropriately used Liev Tolstoy; commonly Leo Tolstoy in Anglophone countries) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction. Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's greatest novelists. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.
His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 15, 2021
Tolstoy thought that our purpose in life is to expand our capacity to love God and our fellow beings - humans, animals and even plants. He thought that we do not die until it is in God's (and thereby our) best interest that we die. He believed that we go on learning in life up to and especially through the process of dying, during which another life is revealed to us.
"The human soul cannot be destroyed when the body is. What will remain is eternal".
"Nothing is more inevitable than the death that awaits each of us; nevertheless, everyone lives as if death will not happen".
"The more profoundly one comprehends one's own life, the less one believes in one's destruction at death".
"Only a person who has never seriously thought about death does not believe in immortality".
"People will know that they do not die only when they understand that they never were born but that they always existed and will exist. People will only believe in their immortality when they understand that their life is not a 'wave' but is eternal movement which only appears as an individual 'wave' in this life".
"A person who believes that his life did not begin at birth and will not end at death finds it easier to live a good life than a person who does not understand or believe this".
"Life is not destroyed but only changes form at death".
"Remember that you do not live in the world - you pass through it".
"No matter what you do, always be ready to let it go. So keep testing whether or not you can let go. The expectation of death teaches us this".
"If we believe that everything that happens o us in this life is for our good - and a person who believes that the life source is good cannot help but believes this - then what happens when we die must also be for our good".
At first everyone thinks he is living for his own happiness, joy and satisfaction. Many people go on thinking this way until they die. But this is a serious error. First, it is a serious error because all joys and satisfactions lose their luster and grow stale. A person has a certain wish, and he thinks that if he gets that wish he will be happy; but after he gets what he wants, the charm wears off, and he begins to wish for something else - and then something else without end. Since pleasures are few and soon grow stale and since the desire for happiness is never satisfied, a person can never be satisfied no matter how powerful and rich he may be. On the contrary, the richer he is, the more bored he gets, because the more a person has, the less he is satisfied. This is one reason that a person who defines his happiness as the pursuit of pleasure will never obtain his goal.
Every rational person must understand his role in this life is similar to that of a worker who enters a factory and sees that the owner has prepared lodging, food and tools for the job. Any rational worker could deduce that he must work in order to use the things that have been prepared for him. Human beings must draw the same conclusion. The world is a large factory, which people have entered. God is the owner of the factory, and the worker's task is to do the will of God Who sent him.
Undeserved hatred and contempt liberates us from caring about public opinion and puts our attention on the only steadfast foundation of life: following one's conscience (God's will).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is clear that Tolstoy placed great importance on the role of death as an essential part of the spiritual life. Far from being a morbid subject, Tolstoy believed that thinking about death leads man to discover his greatest happiness: the Kingdom of God on earth. Man enters the Kingdom of God when he realizes that his sole purpose in life is to teach himself to love God and his fellow beings. Death is one of the main teachers in this higher enterprise. Man's knowledge of his eventual death stimulates him to examine what is important in life and to prioritize his actions. Death indicates the pointlessness of most of the activities that originate in man's ego: his desire for power, for material goods, and for high positions.
Knowing that death is inevitable, man is driven to look for more lasting rewards; in other words, he gives love and kindness in human relationships the importance they usually lack in the human scramble for material goods and status. Death therefore is a tool by which mankind can recognize the importance of love in human relations, sharpening mankind's moral sense. As a person's spirit becomes detached from animal desires, the spirit can continue to grow strong even though the body goes, weakens and dies. If a person achieves the ability to love, he defeats death by entering a greater spiritual kingdom - a different sort of life - a life of continuous joy. Tolstoy uses the metaphor of the butterfly's new life after abandoning its cocoon to illustrate the growth of the human soul. He thought people continue to grow spiritually up to and including the moments of death, when they catch a glimpse of another reality:
"The dying person has a different time comprehending the living, but it seems that it is not because he cannot understand life, but because he is absorbed by understanding something that the living do not and cannot understand".
"Everyone is... I am ... our manifestations... the manifestations come to an end... that is all there is to it."
"The human soul cannot be destroyed when the body is. What will remain is eternal".
"Nothing is more inevitable than the death that awaits each of us; nevertheless, everyone lives as if death will not happen".
"The more profoundly one comprehends one's own life, the less one believes in one's destruction at death".
"Only a person who has never seriously thought about death does not believe in immortality".
"People will know that they do not die only when they understand that they never were born but that they always existed and will exist. People will only believe in their immortality when they understand that their life is not a 'wave' but is eternal movement which only appears as an individual 'wave' in this life".
"A person who believes that his life did not begin at birth and will not end at death finds it easier to live a good life than a person who does not understand or believe this".
"Life is not destroyed but only changes form at death".
"Remember that you do not live in the world - you pass through it".
"No matter what you do, always be ready to let it go. So keep testing whether or not you can let go. The expectation of death teaches us this".
"If we believe that everything that happens o us in this life is for our good - and a person who believes that the life source is good cannot help but believes this - then what happens when we die must also be for our good".
At first everyone thinks he is living for his own happiness, joy and satisfaction. Many people go on thinking this way until they die. But this is a serious error. First, it is a serious error because all joys and satisfactions lose their luster and grow stale. A person has a certain wish, and he thinks that if he gets that wish he will be happy; but after he gets what he wants, the charm wears off, and he begins to wish for something else - and then something else without end. Since pleasures are few and soon grow stale and since the desire for happiness is never satisfied, a person can never be satisfied no matter how powerful and rich he may be. On the contrary, the richer he is, the more bored he gets, because the more a person has, the less he is satisfied. This is one reason that a person who defines his happiness as the pursuit of pleasure will never obtain his goal.
Every rational person must understand his role in this life is similar to that of a worker who enters a factory and sees that the owner has prepared lodging, food and tools for the job. Any rational worker could deduce that he must work in order to use the things that have been prepared for him. Human beings must draw the same conclusion. The world is a large factory, which people have entered. God is the owner of the factory, and the worker's task is to do the will of God Who sent him.
Undeserved hatred and contempt liberates us from caring about public opinion and puts our attention on the only steadfast foundation of life: following one's conscience (God's will).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is clear that Tolstoy placed great importance on the role of death as an essential part of the spiritual life. Far from being a morbid subject, Tolstoy believed that thinking about death leads man to discover his greatest happiness: the Kingdom of God on earth. Man enters the Kingdom of God when he realizes that his sole purpose in life is to teach himself to love God and his fellow beings. Death is one of the main teachers in this higher enterprise. Man's knowledge of his eventual death stimulates him to examine what is important in life and to prioritize his actions. Death indicates the pointlessness of most of the activities that originate in man's ego: his desire for power, for material goods, and for high positions.
Knowing that death is inevitable, man is driven to look for more lasting rewards; in other words, he gives love and kindness in human relationships the importance they usually lack in the human scramble for material goods and status. Death therefore is a tool by which mankind can recognize the importance of love in human relations, sharpening mankind's moral sense. As a person's spirit becomes detached from animal desires, the spirit can continue to grow strong even though the body goes, weakens and dies. If a person achieves the ability to love, he defeats death by entering a greater spiritual kingdom - a different sort of life - a life of continuous joy. Tolstoy uses the metaphor of the butterfly's new life after abandoning its cocoon to illustrate the growth of the human soul. He thought people continue to grow spiritually up to and including the moments of death, when they catch a glimpse of another reality:
"The dying person has a different time comprehending the living, but it seems that it is not because he cannot understand life, but because he is absorbed by understanding something that the living do not and cannot understand".
"Everyone is... I am ... our manifestations... the manifestations come to an end... that is all there is to it."
August 12, 2025
A book that tells simple yet engaging stories about people’s ambitions and the battle between good and evil. Each short story focuses on a single theme and aims to deliver its message by the end.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews