Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

Let us forgive each other -- only then will we live in peace.

If you want to be happy, be.

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.

Happiness is in your ability to love others.

Our body is a machine for living.

Life is fragile and absurd.

The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.

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

There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.

Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.

All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.

Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.

A bad mood is often the reason for blaming others; but very often blaming others causes bad feelings in us: The more we blame others, the worse we feel.

Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

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

A holy spirit lives within you.

Every misconception is a poison: there are no harmless misconceptions.

All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

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

Life is a transition from one form to another. The life of this world is the material for a new form.

The Jew is eternal. He is the embodiment of eternity.

Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself.

A cigar is a sort of thing, not exactly a pleasure, but the crown and outward sign of pleasure.

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

Time is a perpetual motion, without a single moment of rest.

The first rule of achieving goodness is this: think only about self-perfection.

The earth is the general and equal possession of all humanity and therefore cannot be the property of individuals.

The Jew is the emblem of civil and religious toleration. Love the stranger and the sojourner, Moses commands, because you have been strangers in the land of Egypt.

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

Boredom, the desire for desires.

These men are looked upon as the most malevolent, the most dangerous, and generally as the most unbelieving of all human beings, and yet they are the only men of our time believing in the Gospel doctrine, if not as a whole, at least in part.

The cudgel of the people's war was lifted with all its menacing and majestic might, and caring nothing for good taste and procedure, with dull-witted simplicity but sound judgement it rose and fell, making no distinctions.

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

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

If you want to be happy, be!

Follow the best way of life you possibly can, and habit will make this way suitable and pleasant to you.

I often think how unfairly life's good fortune is sometimes distributed.

Love those you hate you.

Never did Christ utter a single word attesting to a personal resurrection and a life beyond the grave.

And the cause of everything is that which we call God.

I don't think anything, she said, but 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.

Anna smiled,as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love.

Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it.

I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt it in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.

Childhood candor... shall I ever find you again?

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

Except life's usual answer to the most complex and insoluble questions. That answer is: live in the needs of the day, that is find forgetfulness.

What's all this love of arguing? No one ever convinces anyone else.

Debates conceal rather than reveal the truth. Truth is revealed in solitude.

Can it be that I have overlooked something, that there is something which I have failed to understand? Is it not possible that this state of despair is common to everyone?

Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and agonies of the soul, but all the time his most tormenting tragedy has been, is, and will always be, the tragedy of the bedroom.

He began to pray, and was obsessed by the fear lest he should die without having done any good in the world; he longed to live, and to live so as to achieve the renunciation of self.

To destroy governmental violence, only one thing is needed: It is that people should understand that the feeling of patriotism, which alone supports that instrument of violence, is a rude, harmful, disgraceful, and bad feeling, and, above all, is immoral.

You're not going to be different ... you're going to be the same as you've always been; with doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation, of a happiness which you won't get, and which isn't possible for you.

I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do. But if even that cannot be, command me to disappear, and I disappear. You shall not see me if my presence is distasteful to you.

And the light by which she had read the book filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and evil, flared up more brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that had been in darkness, flickered, began to grow dim, and was quenched forever.

But really, why should you distress yourself? Whoever stirs up the past -- out with his eye! Who is not a sinner before God and to blame before the Tsar, as the saying is?

He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered , with difficulty recognizing the beauty for which he picked and ruined it.

The simplest and shortest ethical precept is to be served as little as possible ... and to serve others as much as possible.

In precisely the same way the specialty of government is not to obey, but to enforce obedience. And a government is only a government so long as it can make itself obeyed, and therefore it always strives for that and will never willingly abandon its power.

It is not enough to be a hardworking person. Think: what do you work at?

Just fancy! One can hear and see the grass growing,' thought Levin, as he noticed wet slate-coloured aspen leaf move close to the point of a blade of grass.

All governments are in equal measure good and evil. The best ideal is anarchy.

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.

Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and truth.

I have learned what must be, and therefore have come to see the whole horror of what is.

The activity of art is... as important as the activity of language itself, and as universal.

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.

Nekhlúdoff clearly saw that all these people were arrested, locked up, exiled, not really because they transgressed against justice or behaved unlawfully, but only because they were an obstacle hindering the officials and the rich from enjoying the property they had taken away from the people.

But Levin was in love, and so it seemed to him that Kitty was so perfect in every respect that she was a creature far above everything earthly; and that he was a creature so low and so earthly that it could not even be conceived that other people and she herself could regard him as worthy of her.

Often a man goes on for years imaging that the religious teaching that had been imparted to him since childhood is still intact, while all the time there is not a trace of it left in him.

The Jew -- is the symbol of eternity. … He is the one who for so long had guarded the prophetic message and transmitted it to all mankind. A people such as this can never disappear. The Jew is eternal. He is the embodiment of eternity.

Blessed are the peacemakers; theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

In order to get the power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness, but with qualities which are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, cruelty.

The only happy marriages I know are arranged ones.

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

But she was not even grateful to him for it; nothing good on Pierre's part seemed to her to be an effort, it seemed so natural for him to be kind to everyone that there was no merit in his kindness.

One is ashamed to say how little is needed for all men to be delivered from those calamities which now oppress them; it is only needful not to lie.

There was no answer, except the general answer life gives to all the most complex and insoluble questions. That answer is: one must live for the needs of the day, in other words, become oblivious.

It is a rude feeling, because it is natural only to people standing on the lowest level of morality, and expecting from other nations such outrages as they themselves are ready to inflict.

He felt like a man who, after straining his eyes to peer into the remote distance, finds what he was seeking at his very feet. All his life he had been looking over the heads of those around him, while he had only to look before him without straining his eyes. p 1320.

Upon meeting, you're judged by your clothes, upon parting you're judged by your wits.

And people strive not for the good in life, but for goods they can call their own.

Life is too long to say anything definitely; always say perhaps.

He was one of those diplomats who like and know how to work, and, despite his laziness, he occasionally spent nights at his desk.

By patriotism is meant, not only spontaneous, instinctive love for one's own nation, and preference for it above all other nations, but also the belief that such love and preference are good and useful.

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.

As often happens between men who have chosen different pursuits, each, while in argument justifying the other's activity, despised it in the depth of his heart.

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

If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect.

I can't understand how anyone can write without rewriting everything over and over again.

The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.

But if Christianity really gives peace, and we really want peace, patriotism is a survival from barbarous times, which must not only not be evoked and educated, as we now do, but which must be eradicated by all means, by means of preaching, persuasion, contempt, and ridicule.

It was clear that everything considered important and good was insignificant and repulsive, and that all this glamour and luxury hid the old well-known crimes, which not only remained unpunished but were adorned with all the splendor men can devise.

Live in the needs of the day.

He was always in a hurry to get where he was not.

I was shy by nature, and rendered worse in that respect by a consciousness of my own ugliness. I am certain that nothing so much influences the development of a man as his exterior--though the exterior itself less than his belief in its plainness or beauty.

While I doubted, I had hope; but now there is no hope left and all the same I doubt everything.

Levin tried to drink a little coffee, and put a piece of roll into his mouth, but his mouth could do nothing with it. He took the piece out of his mouth, put on his overcoat and went out to walk about again.

And so there was no single cause for war, but it happened simply because it had to happen.

Everything was made bright by her. She was the smile that shed light all around her.

Not having yet passed through those bitter experiences which enforce upon older years circumspection and coldness, I deprived myself of the pure delight of a fresh, childish instinct for the absurd purpose of trying to resemble grown-up people.

I endeavor to recall the happy comforting dreams interrupted by my returning to consciousness of reality, but to my astonishment so soon as I recapture the thread of my former reverie I find it impossible to go on with it and, most astonishing of all, my imaginings no longer afford me any pleasure.

A true work of art is the revelation of a new conception of life arising in the artist's soul, which, when expressed, lights up the path along with humanity progresses.

Besides, to fall out of love and in love at the same time is to love twice as deeply as one did before.

It seems to me that what we call beauty in a face lies in the smile: if the smile heightens the charm of the face, the face is a beautiful one; if it does not alter it, the face is ordinary, and if it is spoilt by a smile, it is ugly.

Hard as Stepan Arkadyich tried to be a solicitous father and husband, he never could remember that he had a wife and children.

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.

Don't seek God in temples. He is close to you. He is within you. Only you should surrender to Him and you will rise above happiness and unhappiness.

An agile but unintelligent and abnormal German, possessed of the mania of grandeur.

Much unhappiness has come from things left unsaid.

Vengeance is mine; I will repay.

Everything presents itself to me, in the coarsest, most loathsome light.

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

One must be cunning and wicked in this world.

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

Men are so accustomed to maintaining external order by violence that they cannot conceive of life being possible without violence.

But believe me, my dear boy, there is nothing stronger than those two: patience and time, they will do it all.

There never has been and cannot be a good life without self-control. Apart from self-control no good life is imaginable.

The most important time is Now.

There will be today, there will be tomorrow, there will be always, and there was yesterday, and there was the day before.

Konstantin Levin did not like talking and hearing about the beauty of nature. Words for him took away the beauty of what he saw.

Well, my theory is this: war is such a terrible, such an atrocious, thing that no man, at least no Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of beginning it; but it belongs to government alone, when it becomes inevitable.

One need only to admit that public tranquillity is in danger and any action finds a justification. All the horrors of the reign of terror were based only on solicitude for public tranquillity.

Men pray to the Almighty to relieve poverty. But poverty comes not from God's laws-it is blasphemy of the worst kind to say that. Poverty comes from man's injustice to his fellow man.

Anna had the faculty of blushing.

I have found that a #story leaves a deeper impression when it is impossible to tell which side the author is on.

We have become so accustomed to the religious lie that surrounds us that we do not notice the atrocity, stupidity and cruelty with which the teaching of the Christian church is permeated.

Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but the desire to find the causes is implanted in man's soul.

A new conception of life cannot be imposed on men; it can only be freely assimilated. And it can only be freely assimilated in two ways: one spiritual and internal, the other experimental and external.

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.

Today, nobody sees, or wishes to see, that in our time the enslavement of the majority of men is based on money taxes, levied on land and otherwise, which are collected by government from the subjects.

Every revolution by force only puts more violent means of enslavement into the hands of the persons in power.

I have discovered nothing. I have only found out what I knew. I understand the force that in the past gave me life, and now too gives me life. I have been set free from falsity, I have found the Master.

To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed through words, so to convey this so that others may experience the same feeling -- this is the activity of art.

What doubt can you have of the Creator when you behold His creation?... Who has decked the heavenly firmament with its stars? Who has clothed the earth in its beauty? How could it be without the creator?

We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not understand).

We should show life neither as it is or as it ought to be, but only as we see it in our dreams.

Where there is love, there is God also.

Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallpox.

By digging into our souls, we often dig up what might better have remained there unnoticed.

In marriage the great thing was love, and that with love one would always be happy, for happiness rests only on oneself.

People are always happy where there is love, because their happiness in in themselves.

He was fond of angling, and seemed proud of being able to like such a stupid occupation.

After the doctor's departure Koznyshev felt inclined to go to the river with his fishing rod. He was fond of angling, and seemed proud of being able to like such a stupid occupation.

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.

As long as there are slaughter houses there will always be battlefields.

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.

We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not understand). The more we try to explain such events in history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to us.

A Gentleman is a man who will pay his gambling debts even when he knows he has been cheated.

Christian love comes from the understanding that there is a unity of divine origins in oneself and in other people, and not only in people, but in all living things.

We live in this world like a child who enters a room where a clever person is speaking. The child did not hear the beginning of the speech, and he leaves before the end; and there are certain things which he hears but does not understand.

Power is the relation of a given person to other persons, in which the more this person expresses opinions, theories and justifications of the collective action the less is his participation in that action.

A man can spend several hours sitting cross-legged in the same position if he knows that noting prevents him from changing it; but if he knows that he has to sit with his legs crossed like that, he will get cramps, his legs will twitch and strain towards where he would like to stretch them.

All these institutions prisons seemed purposely invented for the production of depravity and vice, condensed to such a degree that no other conditions could produce it, and for the spreading of this condensed depravity and vice broadcast among the whole population.

The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God.

Division of labor is a justification for sloth.

When you feel the desire for power, you should stay in solitude for some time.

If religion is the establishing of a relationship between man and the universe, then morality is the explanation of those activities that automatically result when a person maintains a relationship to the universe.

The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.

In order to correctly define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and consider it as one of the conditions of human life. ...Reflecting on it in this way, we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of effective communication between people.

Religions are the exponents of the highest comprehension of life... within a given age in a given society... a basis for evaluating human sentiments. If feelings bring people nearer to the religion's ideal... they are good; if these estrange them from it, and oppose it, they are bad.

Excuse me' he added, taking the opera glasses out of her hands and looking over her bare shoulder at the row of boxes opposite, 'i'm afraid i'm becoming ridiculous.

God forgive me everything!' she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling.

He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.

I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.

God knows, but He's waiting.

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

He liked to fish; he seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation.

In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs and other heads of states.

Very often, all the activity of the human mind is directed not in revealing the truth, but in hiding the truth.

I began to realize that the most profound wisdom of man was rooted in the answers given by faith and that I did not have the right to deny them on the grounds of reason; above all, I realized that these answers alone can form a reply to the question of life.

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.