Leo Tolstoy > Quotes

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

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata

“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“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.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“If you want to be happy, be.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“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.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.”
― Leo Tolstoy

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

“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“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...”
― Leo Tolstoy

“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.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“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.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“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.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Boredom: the desire for desires.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“rest, nature, books, music…such is my idea of happiness…”
― Leo Tolstoy

“True life is lived when tiny changes occur.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. 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. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children perhaps. — What more can the heart of a man desire?”
― Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness and Other Stories

“Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed. ”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“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.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“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.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“To get rid of an enemy one must love him. ”
― Leo Tolstoy

“The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“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.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“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.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

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

“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”
― Leo Tolstoy

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

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

“Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“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.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“he was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“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...”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Music is the shorthand of emotion”
― Leo Tolstoy

“It's hard to love a woman and do anything.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“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.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“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.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Anything is better than lies and deceit! ”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“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. ”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.”
― Leo Tolstoy