Leo Tolstoy Quotes

People should never worship images. The spread of mental darkness is due to the prevalence of idolatry.

There are a still lot of people in today's church who can easily identify the idolatry outside the church and are pretty proud of the fact that they are not like them. And yet, we are far too slow to recognize the idolatry inside the church and more painfully, the idolatry inside our hearts.

Man's mind is like a store of idolatry and superstition; so much so that if a man believes his own mind it is certain that he will forsake God and forge some idol in his own brain.

There is a danger in monotheism, and it's called idolatry. And we know the prophets of Israel were very, very concerned about idolatry, the worship of a human expression of the divine.

An idol of the mind is as offensive to God as an idol of the hand.

How it came to pass that man, originally taught, as we doubt not he was, to know and to worship the true Jehovah, is found, at so early a period of his history, a worshiper of baser objects, it is foreign to our present purpose to inquire.

Jeremiah has to lament that there are as many altars as towns in Judah.

Banish afar the foul worship of idols. On their alters let the blood of animals smoke no more, nor the soothsayer look for omens in warm entrails, nor the meaningless augur attend to the song of birds. Let all the images of the gods be smashed to the ground.

This cursed man was a superior man, although God did not inform him of the right religion.

The root of evil is in the illusion that we are bodies. This, if any, is the original sin.

If we refuse our homage to statues and frigid images, the very counterpart of their dead originals, with which hawks, and mice, and spiders are so well acquainted, does it not merit praise instead of penalty [Christians were punished for not worshiping Roman gods] that we have rejected what we have come to see is error? We cannot surely be made out to injure those whom we are certain are nonentities. What does not exist is in its nonexistence secure from suffering.

Religion is the finger pointing to God. People are too busy licking the finger to notice where it's pointing.

The opposite of Christianity is not atheism, but idolatry.

There never was a false god, nor was there ever really a false religion, unless you call a child a false man.

Beware of manufacturing a God of your own: a God who is all mercy, but not just. Such a God is an idol of your own.

And the news got worse. It appeared that there was this whole other person Jesus Christ whose birthday a lot of people tended to confuse with mine. I was personally outraged. It was a long time before I forgave the Lord for that.

If you can't see the sun you will be impressed with a street light. If you've never felt thunder and lightning you'll be impressed with fireworks. And if you turn your back on the greatness and majesty of God you'll fall in love with a world of shadows and short-lived pleasures.

The work is hindered. The glory of God is tarnished and it is because the people of God no longer know how to discern the things of God.

Gods are called many by the error of some who worshipped many deities, thinking as they did the planets and other stars were gods, and also the separate parts of the world.

Many people think that the Bible is the authentic word of God and they worship the Bible, making it an idol.

We are, on the whole, an idolatrous people...

To worship our false selves is to worship nothing. And the worship of nothing is hell.

Men reverence one another, not yet God.

How glad the heathens would have been, That worship idols, wood and stone, If they the book God had seen.

Idolatry is not simply worshiping a stone image; idolatry is any concept of God that reduces Him to less than who He really is.