Leo Tolstoy Quotes

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

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

There are two aspects to the life of every man: the personal life, which is free in proportion as its interests are abstract, and the elemental life of the swarm, in which a man must inevitably follow...

There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life which is the more free the more abstract it's interests, and his elemental swarm-life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for...

There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth.

There is only one real knowledge: that which helps us to be free. Every other type of knowledge is mere amusement. —VISHNU PURANA,

There lay between them, separating them, that same terrible line of the unknown and of fear, like the line separating the living from the dead.

Therein is the whole business of one’s life; to seek out and save in the soul that which is perishing.

These loaves, pigeons, and two little boys seemed unearthly. It all happened at the same time: a little boy ran over to a pigeon, glancing over at Levin with a smile; the pigeon flapped its wings and...

They had to return to the one sure and never-failing resource- slander.

They say that that's a difficult task, that nothing's amusing that isn't spiteful, he began with a smile. But I'll try. Get me a subject. It all lies in the subject. If a subject's given me, it's easy...

They talked about peace, but did not believe in its possibility.

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.

Those are the men,' added Bolkonsky with a sigh which he could not suppress, as they went out of the palace, 'those are the men who decide the fate of nations.

Those joys were so small that they passed unnoticed, like gold in sand, and at bad moments she could see nothing but the pain, nothing but sand; but there were good moments too when she saw nothing bu...

Those whom God wishes to destroy he drives mad.

Time and Patience.

Universal military service may be compared to the efforts of a man to prop up his falling house who so surrounds it and fills it with props and buttresses and planks and scaffolding that he manages to...

Well, pray if you like, only you'd do better to use your judgment.

Well, what is that to me? I can't see her! she cried.