Leo Tolstoy famous quotes

If you want to be happy, be.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Happiness #Want #Want To Be Happy

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Life #Reality #World

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

#Inspirational #Change #Happiness

Boredom: the desire for desires.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Boredom #Desire #Enthusiasm

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

#Inspirational #Trust #Spiritual

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

#Morning #Inspiration #Writing

All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Love #Life #Marriage

Spring is the time of plans and projects.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Spring #Springtime #Projects

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

#Love #Marriage #Changing Your Life

Each person's task in life is to become an increasingly better person.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Change #Tasks #Life Is

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

#Relationship #Marriage #Wedding

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

#Love #Life #Mean

There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Heart #Dark #Men

If he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because ...its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling - killing.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Good Life #Animal #Feelings

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

#Beautiful #Teaching #Personality

It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Love You

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

#Intelligent #Men #Changing Your Life

I don't allow myself to doubt myself even for a moment.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Doubt #Moments

"A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist."
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Art #Real #Separation

she smiled at him, and at her own fears.
-- 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

#Love #Life #Marriage

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Life #Motivational #Patience

The purpose of life is to bring forth goodness. Now, in this life.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Purpose #Purpose Of Life #Goodness

If people lacked the capacity to receive the thoughts of the men who preceded them and to pass on to others their own thoughts, men would be like wild beasts. And if men lacked this other capacity of being infected by art, people would be almost more savage still, and, above all, more separated from and more hostile to one another. Therefore the activity of art is a most important one, as important as the activity of speech itself and as generally diffused.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Art #Men #People

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

#Law #Reason #Loving Others

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

#Inspirational #Life #Wisdom

The idea of beauty is the fundamental idea of everything. In the world we see only distortions of the fundamental idea, but art, by imagination, may lift itself to the height of this idea. Art is therefore akin to creation.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Art #Ideas #Imagination

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

#Soul #Changing Your Life #Unnoticed

If you see that some aspect of your society is bad, and you want to improve it, there is only one way to do so: you have to improve people. And in order to improve people, you begin with only ONE thing: you can become better yourself.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Order #People #Want

Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal - that there is no human relation between master and slave.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Money #Slavery #Facts

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

#Inspirational #Karma #Peace

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Life #Beauty #Lying

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.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Food #Men #Animal

The pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in searching for it.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Lying #Pleasure #Discovering

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

#Love #Heart #Thinking

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

#Patience #Time #Warrior

The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Kingdoms #Helping #Significance

All that day she had had the feeling that she was playing in the theatre with actors better than herself and that her poor playing spoiled the whole thing.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Feelings #Theatre #Actors

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

#Writing #Journey #Men

Energy rests upon love; and come as it will, there's no forcing it.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Energy

I think that in order to know love one must make a mistake and then correct it.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Mistake #Thinking #Order

In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Men #Order #Alive

One can no more approach people without love than one can approach bees without care. Such is the quality of bees...
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Nature #People #Quality

My piece of bread only belongs to me when I know that everyone else has a share, and that no one starves while I eat.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Pieces #Charity #Bread

By words one transmits thoughts to another, by means of art, one transmits feelings.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Art #Mean #Feelings

Many people have ideas on how others should change; few people have ideas on how they should change.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Ideas #People #Should

It is possible to live only as long as life intoxicates us; once we are sober we cannot help seeing that it is all a delusion, a stupid delusion.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Stupid #Long #Pessimistic

Death destroys the body, as the scaffolding is destroyed after the building is up and finished. And he whose building is up rejoices at the destruction of the scaffolding and of the body.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Body #Building #Destruction

Life consists in penetrating the unknown, and fashioning our actions in accord with the new knowledge thus acquired.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Our Actions #Action #Mystery

To say that you can love one person all your life is just like saying that one candle will continue burning as long as you live.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Love #Long #Burning

If people tell you that you should live your life preparing for the future, do not believe them. Real Life is found only in the present.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Real #Believe #People

Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Love #Mean #Return

Once we're thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost, but it's only here that the new and the good begins.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Thinking #Path #Lost

There can be only one permanent revolution- a moral one: the regeneration of the inner man.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Men #Revolution #Moral

In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Grease #Wheels #Flattery

Everything depends on upbringing.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Parenting #Parent #Inspire

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

#Majority #Doe #Changing Your Life

Kings are the slaves of history.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Kings #Slave

A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Winning #Battle

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

#Love #Enemy #Divine

Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Art #Men #Universal Life

The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without authority, there could not be worse violence than that of authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. "To establish Anarchy." "Anarchy will be instituted." But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require protection from governmental power, and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Thinking #Order #People

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.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Dream #Creepy #Wake Up

When the suffering of another creature causes you to feel pain, do not submit to the initial desire to flee from the suffering one, but on the contrary, come closer, as close as you can to her who suffers, and try to help her.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Pain #Suffering #Desire

Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Simple #Ordinary #Terrible

The key to success in life is using the good thoughts of wise people.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Wise #Keys #People

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

#Sleep #Battle

Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Ends #Terrible

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
-- Leo Tolstoy

#One Love #Always Loved You #Persons

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

#Sacrifice #Movement #Chance

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

#Would Be #Sometimes

Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Writing #Law #Easy

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

#Science #Order #Fragments

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

#Light #Knowing Who You Are #Two

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

#Life #Reason #Possibility

The improvement of life was only accomplished to the extent to which it was based on a change of consciousness, that is, to the extent to which the law of violence was replaced in men's consciousness by the law of love.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Men #Law #Violence

Art is a microscope which the artist fixes on the secrets of his soul, and shows to people these secrets which are common to all.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Art #People #Soul

He in his madness prays for storms, and dreams that storms will bring him peace
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Dream #Storm #Madness

In a writer there must always be two people - the writer and the critic.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Two #People #Critics

To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Truth #Honesty #People

For if we allow that human life is always guided by reason, we destroy the premise that life is possible at all.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Life Is #Reason #Human Life

The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#People #Poverty #Increase

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

#Inspirational #Romantic #Long

Man must not check reason by tradition, but contrariwise, must check tradition by reason.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Men #Tradition #Reason

One may say with one's lips: 'I believe that God is one, and also three' - but no one can believe it, because the words have no sense.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Believe #Religion #Three

The business of art lies just in this, -- to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Art #Lying #Might

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

#Doe #Lambs #Cry

Am I mad, to see what others do not see, or are they mad who are responsible for all that I am seeing?
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Mad #Responsible

Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man's life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Drama #Writing #Men

The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Men #People #Men And Women

It is within my power either to serve God or not to serve Him. Serving Him, I add to my own good and the good of the whole world. Not serving Him, I forfeit my own good and deprive the world of that good, which was in my power to create.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Faith #Inspiration #Add

The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Love #Beautiful #Hero

One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Inspirational #Karma #Men

True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Art #People #Perception

An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life—becoming a better person.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Perfect #Arrogance #Becoming

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

#War #Voice #Trying

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.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Peace #War #Independent

Just as one candle lights another and can light thousands of other candles, so one heart illuminates another heart and can illuminate thousands of other hearts.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Heart #Light #Candle Lights

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.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Machines #Goes On #Body

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.
-- Leo Tolstoy

#Art #Food #Men