Leo Tolstoy Quotes

Oh, how happy I am to have found it at last. Yes! It's all vanity, it's all an illusion, everything except that infinite sky.

There are no conditions to which a man cannot become accustomed.

Love them that hate you, but you can't love them whom you hate.

To love one's neighbors to love one's enemies to love everything - to love God in all His manifestations - human love serves to love those dear to us but to love one's enemies we need divine love.

Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow - that is patience. The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.

It is usually imagined that a thief, a murderer, a spy, a prostitute, acknowledging his profession as evil, is ashamed of it. But the contrary is true. People whom fate and their sin-mistakes have pla...

It is impossible for there to be a person with no religion (i.e. without any kind of relationship to the world) as it is for there to be a person without a heart. He may not know that he has a religio...

Formerly...when he tried to do anything for the good of everybody, for humanity...for the whole village, he had noticed that the thoughts of it were agreeable, but the activity itself was always unsat...

She was in that highly-wrought state when the reasoning powers act with great rapidity: the state a man is in before a battle or a struggle, in danger, and at the decisive moments of life - those mome...

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.

Speransky, either because he appreciated Prince Andrey's abilities or because he thought it as well to secure his adherence, showed off his calm, impartial sagacity before Prince Andrey, and flattered...

There are two sides to life for every individual: a personal life, in which his freedom exists in proportion to the abstract nature of his interests, and an elemental life within the swarm of humanity...

If a teacher has only love for the cause, it will be a good teacher. If a teacher has only love for student, as a father, mother, he will be better than the teacher, who read all the books, but has no...

I turned my attention to every­ thing that was done by people who claimed to be Christians, I was horrified.

I realized that even if all the people in the world from the day of creation found this to be necessary according to whatever theory, I knew that it was not necessary and that it was wrong. Therefore,...

A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul.

Natasha, in her lilac silk dress trimmed with black lace walked, as women can walk, with the more repose and stateliness the greater the pain and shame in her soul.

Time is an illusion of life the life of the past and the future clouds men from the true life of the present.

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

You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom.