Leo Tolstoy

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”

“I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.”

“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 happines...”

“Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.”

“In actuality, it was like the homes of all people who are not really rich but who want to look rich, and therefore end up looking like one another: it had damasks, ebony, plants, carpets, and bronzes, everything dark and gleaming—all the effects a certain class of people produce so as to look like p...”

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

“If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.”

“Music is the shorthand of emotion.”

“And all people live, Not by reason of any care they have for themselves, But by the love for them that is in other people.”

“All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

“Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live.”

“God forgive me everything!’ she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling...”

“Toate familiile fericite se aseamănă între ele. Fiecare familie nefericită este nefericită în felul ei.”

“There are many faiths, but the spirit is one — in me, and in you, and in him. So that if everyone believes himself, all will be united; everyone be himself and all will be as one.”

“The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.”

“We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening.”

“Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself.”

“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”

“You were the first to demonstrate beyond question by your experience that man is man everywhere, that is, a kind, sociable being with whom communication can and should be established through kindness and truth, not guns and spirits. I do not know what contribution your collections and discoveries wi...”

“Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.”

“If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one's reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state.”

“Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.”

“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.”

“All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.”

“In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.”

“The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.”

“To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.”

“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.”

“The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.”

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”

“Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.”

“True life is lived when tiny changes occur.”

“There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.”

“War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.”

“Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.”

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”

“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”

“I've always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.”

“If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace.”

“They've got no idea what happiness is, they don't know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us--there is no life.”

“You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.”

“It's hard to love a woman and do anything.”

“Love those you hate you.”

“We are asleep until we fall in Love!”

“He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.”

“Everything I know, I know because of love.”

“I'm like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he's cold, and his clothes are torn, and he's ashamed, but he's not unhappy.”

“He looked at her as a man might look at a faded flower he had plucked, in which it was difficult for him to trace the beauty that had made him pick and so destroy it”

“There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.”

“And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.”

“Here I am...wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end--that there is such a thing as death.”

“Without knowledge of what I am and why I am here, it is impossible to live, and since I cannot know that, I cannot live either. In an infinity of time, in an infinity of matter, and an infinity of space a bubble-organism emerges while will exist for a little time and then burst, and that bubble am I...”

“One must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible. I'm alive and it's not my fault, which means I must somehow go on living the best I can, without bothering anybody, until I die.' 'But what makes you live? With such thoughts, you'll sit without moving, without undertaking anything...' 'Life w...”

“If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good, and man's highest happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must live, we must love, and we must believe that we live not only today on this scrap of earth, but have lived and shall live”

“And where love ends, hate begins”

“Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible.”

“When a man sees a dying animal, horror comes over him: that which he himself is, his essence, is obviously being annihilated before his eyes--is ceasing to be. But when the dying one is a person, and a beloved person, then, besides a sense of horror at the annihilation of life, there is a feeling of...”

“In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair, and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still stronger and purer. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery had arisen, as ins...”

“Then he thought himself unhappy, but happiness was all in the future; now he felt that the best happiness was already in the past.”

“How beautiful the sky looked, how blue and calm and deep! How brilliant and majestic was the setting sun! How tenderly shone the distant waters of the Danube! And fairer still were the purpling mountains stretching far away beyond the river, the convent, the mysterious gorges, the pine forests veile...”

“In the midst of winter, I find within me the invisible summer...”

“Without the support from religion--remember, we talked about it--no father, using only his own resources, would be able to bring up a child.”

“It was long before I could believe that human learning had no clear answer to this question. For a long time it seemed to me, as I listened to the gravity and seriousness wherewith Science affirmed its positions on matters unconnected with the problem of life, that I must have misunderstood somethin...”

“To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.”

“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”

“The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness...”

“Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy.”

“Life did not stop, and one had to live.”

“Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself.”

“It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.”