Leo Tolstoy Quotes

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.

If you want to be happy, be.

Spring is the time of plans and projects.

Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?

Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.

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.

Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.

When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.

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.

Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.

Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!

Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand." - Anna Karenina {Anna Karenina}

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

All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.

If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.

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 happiness.

Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking...

Anything is better than lies and deceit!

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.

Boredom: the desire for desires.

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.

I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be. -Dolly

All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.

Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.

it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.

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

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...

Muhammad has always been standing higher than the Christianity. He does not consider god as a human being and never makes himself equal to God. Muslims worship nothing except God and Muhammad is his Messenger. There is no any mystery and secret in it.

The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good.

Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.

Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.

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

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.

It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.

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.

But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.

If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.

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

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.

We are asleep until we fall in Love!

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.

What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you deal with incompatibility.

He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.

But I'm glad you'll see me as I am. Above all, I wouldn't want people to think that I want to prove anything. I don't want to prove anything, I just want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself. I have that right, haven't I?

I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.

I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.

Everything I know, I know because of love.

He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. This fulfillment showed him the eternal error men make in imagining that their happiness depends on the realization of their desires.

Love those you hate you.

Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget...

Something magical has happened to me: like a dream when one feels frightened and creepy, and suddenly wakes up to the knowledge that no such terrors exist. I have wakened up.

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

A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.

Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid.

All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.

I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.

Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it." - Vronksy {Anna Karenina}

To get rid of an enemy one must love him.

Can it be that I have not lived as one ought?" suddenly came into his head. "But how not so, when I've done everything as it should be done?

Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe. Only the truth gives me consolation - it is the one unbreakable diamond.

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.

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

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.

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.

How can one be well...when one suffers morally?

Every heart has its own skeletons.

A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, 'Today I'm going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.

Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it.

He stepped down, avoiding any long look at her as one avoids long looks at the sun, but seeing her as one sees the sun, without looking.

She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.

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

Everything intelligent is so boring.

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

The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.

Kings are the slaves of history.

I sit on a man's back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible… except by getting off his back.

Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

Music is the shorthand of emotion

Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?

Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.

Life did not stop, and one had to live.

Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won't come out for twenty years, if you really wish to learn.

Everything depends on upbringing.

Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.

God is the same everywhere.

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.

Here's my advice to you: don't marry until you can tell yourself that you've done all you could, and until you've stopped loving the women you've chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you'll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you're old and good for nothing...Otherwise all that's good and lofty in you will be lost.

They say: sufferings are misfortunes," said Pierre. 'But if at once this minute, I was asked, would I remain what I was before I was taken prisoner, or go through it all again, I should say, for God's sake let me rather be a prisoner and eat horseflesh again. We imagine that as soon as we are torn out of our habitual path all is over, but it is only the beginning of something new and good. As long as there is life, there is happiness. There is a great deal, a great deal before us.

Yes, love, ...but not the love that loves for something, to gain something, or because of something, but that love that I felt for the first time, when dying, I saw my enemy and yet loved him. I knew that feeling of love which is the essence of the soul, for which no object is needed. And I know that blissful feeling now too. To love one's neighbours; to love one's enemies. To love everything - to Love God in all His manifestations. Some one dear to one can be loved with human love; but an enemy can only be loved with divine love. And that was why I felt such joy when I felt that I loved that man. What happened to him? Is he alive? ...Loving with human love, one may pass from love to hatred; but divine love cannot change. Nothing, not even death, can shatter it. It is the very nature of the soul. And how many people I have hated in my life. And of all people none I have loved and hated more than her.... If it were only possible for me to see her once more... once, looking into those eyes to say...

A Frenchman's self-assurance stems from his belief that he is mentally and physically irresistibly fascinating to both men and women. An Englishman's self-assurance is founded on his being a citizen of the best organized state in the world and on the fact that, as an Englishman, he always knows what to do, and that whatever he does as an Englishman is unquestionably correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets. A Russian is self-assured simply because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe in the possibility of knowing anything fully.