All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
LEO TOLSTOY The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.
LEO TOLSTOY Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not g...
LEO TOLSTOY All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what ...
LEO TOLSTOY One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken...
LEO TOLSTOY Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.
LEO TOLSTOY He never chooses an opinion; he just wears whatever happens to be in style.
LEO TOLSTOY Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it u...
LEO TOLSTOY Music is the shorthand of emotion.
LEO TOLSTOY True life is lived when tiny changes occur.
LEO TOLSTOY Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, ev...
LEO TOLSTOY All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.
LEO TOLSTOY Only those live who do good.
LEO TOLSTOY But the peasants -- how do the peasants die?
LEO TOLSTOY He who has a mistaken idea of life, will always have a mistaken idea of death.
LEO TOLSTOY A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workin...
LEO TOLSTOY In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that th...
LEO TOLSTOY There is one evident, indubitable manifestation of the Divinity, and that is the laws of right which...
LEO TOLSTOY I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance ...
LEO TOLSTOY it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.
LEO TOLSTOY True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the peopl...
LEO TOLSTOY What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of wills transf...
LEO TOLSTOY A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of hi...
LEO TOLSTOY The only thing that we know is that we know nothing and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.
LEO TOLSTOY I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom a...
LEO TOLSTOY The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all ...
LEO TOLSTOY To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as sayin...
LEO TOLSTOY The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But ...
LEO TOLSTOY Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!
LEO TOLSTOY The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the dem...
LEO TOLSTOY But that's the whole aim of civilization: to make everything a source of enjoyment.
LEO TOLSTOY I understood, not with my intellect but with my whole being, that no theories of the rationality of ...
LEO TOLSTOY Anything is better than lies and deceit!
LEO TOLSTOY Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to u...
LEO TOLSTOY If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.
LEO TOLSTOY Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.
LEO TOLSTOY I think... if it is true that
there are as many minds as there
are heads, then there are...
LEO TOLSTOY It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and wil...
LEO TOLSTOY Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.
LEO TOLSTOY It's hard to love a woman and do anything.
LEO TOLSTOY She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here...
LEO TOLSTOY A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he parti...
LEO TOLSTOY We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.
LEO TOLSTOY Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity...
LEO TOLSTOY A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is e...
LEO TOLSTOY In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
LEO TOLSTOY Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
LEO TOLSTOY I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.
LEO TOLSTOY Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.
LEO TOLSTOY The best generals I have known were... stupid or absent-minded men. Not only does a good army comman...
LEO TOLSTOY The strongest of all warriors are these two
LEO TOLSTOY I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I ...
LEO TOLSTOY A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally both in mind and body as irresisti...
LEO TOLSTOY We lost because we told ourselves we lost.
LEO TOLSTOY I am always with myself and it is I who am my tormentor.
LEO TOLSTOY Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the state...
LEO TOLSTOY The sobs and tears of joy he had not foreseen rose with such force within him that his whole body sh...
LEO TOLSTOY In historic events, the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they ...
LEO TOLSTOY There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are absent.
LEO TOLSTOY The subject of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch and pin down in words--that ...
LEO TOLSTOY Though it is possible to utter words only with the intention to fulfill the will of God, it is very ...
LEO TOLSTOY What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.
LEO TOLSTOY He never chooses an opinion, he just wears whatever happens to be in style.
LEO TOLSTOY All happy families are alike, but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion.
LEO TOLSTOY Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wid...
LEO TOLSTOY Joy can only be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in...
LEO TOLSTOY Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.
LEO TOLSTOY I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom a...
LEO TOLSTOY The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.
LEO TOLSTOY How can one be well...when one suffers morally?
LEO TOLSTOY The Kingdom of God is within you.. and all beings.
LEO TOLSTOY It seldom happens that a man changes his life through his habitual reasoning. No matter how fully he...
LEO TOLSTOY Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
LEO TOLSTOY But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.
LEO TOLSTOY Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?
LEO TOLSTOY There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.
LEO TOLSTOY The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.
LEO TOLSTOY There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.
LEO TOLSTOY War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within the...
LEO TOLSTOY The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffer...
LEO TOLSTOY It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
LEO TOLSTOY Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
LEO TOLSTOY Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continue...
LEO TOLSTOY Boredom: the desire for desires.
LEO TOLSTOY If you want to be happy, be.
LEO TOLSTOY Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.
LEO TOLSTOY He had never thought the question over clearly, but vaguely imagined that his wife had long suspecte...
LEO TOLSTOY Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else i...
LEO TOLSTOY Everything intelligent is so boring.
LEO TOLSTOY I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others tha...
LEO TOLSTOY Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
LEO TOLSTOY Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the histori...
LEO TOLSTOY A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he parti...
LEO TOLSTOY The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their app...
LEO TOLSTOY Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life ...
LEO TOLSTOY An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes wit...
LEO TOLSTOY Muhammad has always been standing higher than the Christianity. He does not consider god as a human ...
LEO TOLSTOY If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the...
LEO TOLSTOY All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.
LEO TOLSTOY Ah, if everyone was as sensitive as you! There's no girl who hasn't gone through that. And it's all ...
LEO TOLSTOY He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the su...
LEO TOLSTOY Himmlisch ist's wenn ich bezwungen Meine irdische Begier; Aber doch wenn's nich gelungen Hatt' ich a...
LEO TOLSTOY If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.
LEO TOLSTOY Speransky, either because he appreciated Prince Andrey's abilities or because he thought it as well ...
LEO TOLSTOY In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease ...
LEO TOLSTOY He stepped down, avoiding any long look at her as one avoids long looks at the sun, but seeing her a...
LEO TOLSTOY There will be today, there will be tomorrow, there will be always, and there was yesterday, and ther...
LEO TOLSTOY We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrea...
LEO TOLSTOY The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby jus...
LEO TOLSTOY Crude, immoral, vulgar and senseless.
LEO TOLSTOY Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not ...
LEO TOLSTOY Life consists in penetrating the unknown, and fashioning our actions in accord with the new knowled...
LEO TOLSTOY All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
LEO TOLSTOY Conceit is incompatible with understanding.
LEO TOLSTOY Everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.
LEO TOLSTOY Pure and complete sorrow is about as impossible as pure and complete joy.
LEO TOLSTOY If one has no vanity in this life of ours, there is no sufficient reason for living.
LEO TOLSTOY A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of hi...
LEO TOLSTOY Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.
LEO TOLSTOY In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, inde...
LEO TOLSTOY History would be wonderful thing - if it were only true.
LEO TOLSTOY Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth.
LEO TOLSTOY If we would only testify to the truth as we see it, it would turn out that there are hundreds, thous...
LEO TOLSTOY If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.
LEO TOLSTOY The only thing that we know is that we know nothing and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.
LEO TOLSTOY Governments need armies to protect them against their enslaved and oppressed subjects.
LEO TOLSTOY The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the dem...
LEO TOLSTOY If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once ...
LEO TOLSTOY Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.
LEO TOLSTOY Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.
LEO TOLSTOY Music is the shorthand of emotion
LEO TOLSTOY When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.
LEO TOLSTOY To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as sayin...
LEO TOLSTOY I often think how unfairly life's good fortune is sometimes distributed.
LEO TOLSTOY Boredom-the desire for desires.
LEO TOLSTOY My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep, and I could not help doing thes...
LEO TOLSTOY what time can be more beautiful than the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and ...
LEO TOLSTOY But she was not even grateful to him for it; nothing good on Pierre's part seemed to her to be an ef...
LEO TOLSTOY He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she beg...
LEO TOLSTOY The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any id...
LEO TOLSTOY [...most men do not try] to recognize the truth, but to persuade themselves that the life they are l...
LEO TOLSTOY The history of mankind is crowded with evidences proving that physical coercion is not adapted to mo...
LEO TOLSTOY Well, do you suppose I made up my mind then that what I had seen was something sickening? Not a bit ...
LEO TOLSTOY Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless re...
LEO TOLSTOY And not only the pride of intellect, but the stupidity of intellect. And, above all, the dishonesty,...
LEO TOLSTOY There is a better way to do it; find it. sign Thomas Edison had hanging in his office A fool vents ...
LEO TOLSTOY God is the same everywhere.
LEO TOLSTOY It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.
LEO TOLSTOY Animalele par să știe că progenitura le perpetuează specia și respectă o anumită lege în ace...
LEO TOLSTOY Înainte mă simțeam stingher,chiar panicat,când vedeam o femeie dichisită,în rochie de bal,dar ...
LEO TOLSTOY Este uimitor cât de răspândită este iluzia că frumusețea echivalează cu binele.
LEO TOLSTOY Women have made of themselves such a weapon to act upon the senses that a young man, and even an old...
LEO TOLSTOY Ah! you wish us to be only objects of sensuality? All right; by the aid of sensuality we will bend y...
LEO TOLSTOY Women, especially those who have passed through the school of marriage, know very well that conversa...
LEO TOLSTOY Never had I heard from my elders that what I thus did was bad. It is true that there are the ten com...
LEO TOLSTOY In the city the wretched feel less sad. One can live there a hundred years without being noticed, an...
LEO TOLSTOY The main thing, and the thing which such people as he do not understand," rejoined the lady, "is tha...
LEO TOLSTOY Non si pone come regola, non si prescrive di essere casti; la castità è di per sé un ideale, o a ...
LEO TOLSTOY What is music? What does it do to us? And why does it do to us what it does? People say that music h...
LEO TOLSTOY Perhaps you think I'm losing the thread of my thought? Not a bit of it! I'm still telling you the st...
LEO TOLSTOY Se poate afla cu ușurință cât fier și ce metale se găsesc în soare și în stele,dar să sco�...
LEO TOLSTOY As soon as a young man advances toward a woman, directly he falls under the influence of this opium,...
LEO TOLSTOY Every man experiences what you call love for every pretty woman and least of all for his wife. That ...
LEO TOLSTOY [...] la schiavitù non è altro che il profitto di pochi del lavoro della massa. Perché la schiavi...
LEO TOLSTOY They abolish the external form, they suppress the formal sales of slaves, and then they imagine and ...
LEO TOLSTOY Te miri cum frumuseţea ne dă iluzia deplină a binelui. Când o femeie frumoasă îndrugă prostii...
LEO TOLSTOY «But you are talking of physical love. Do you not admit a love based upon a conformity of ideals, o...
LEO TOLSTOY Music makes me forget myself, my real position; it transports me to some other position not my own. ...
LEO TOLSTOY Este incredibil cât de completă este iluzia care ne face să credem că frumuseţea este în gener...
LEO TOLSTOY I killed the wife when I first tasted sensual joys without love, and then it was that I killed my wi...
LEO TOLSTOY Another's wife is a white swan, and ours is bitter wormwood.
LEO TOLSTOY Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, that's like supposing the same candle could last yo...
LEO TOLSTOY I wanted to run after him, but remembered that it is ridiculous to run after one's wife's lover in o...
LEO TOLSTOY It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. A handsome woman talks nonsense,...
LEO TOLSTOY Music makes me forget my real situation. It transports me into a state which is not my own. Under th...
LEO TOLSTOY Love does not exist. There exists the physical need for intercourse, and the rational need for a mat...
LEO TOLSTOY Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture, so I need an inn...
LEO TOLSTOY While I doubted, I had hope; but now there is no hope left and all the same I doubt everything.
LEO TOLSTOY Let fear once get possession of the soul, and it does not readily yield its place to another sentime...
LEO TOLSTOY You think that your laws correct evil - they only increase it. There is but one way to end evil - by...
LEO TOLSTOY Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult.
LEO TOLSTOY But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.
LEO TOLSTOY In all human sorrow nothing gives comfort but love and faith, and that in the sight of Christ's comp...
LEO TOLSTOY But that had been grief--this was joy. Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the ordina...
LEO TOLSTOY The latter part of her stay in Voronezh had been the happiest period in Princess Marya's life. Her l...
LEO TOLSTOY Spring is the time of plans and projects.
LEO TOLSTOY He disliked contradiction, and still more, arguments that were continually skipping from one thing t...
LEO TOLSTOY If there was a reason why he preferred the liberal tendency to the conservative one (also held to by...
LEO TOLSTOY Music makes me forget myself, my true condition, it carries me off into another state of being, one ...
LEO TOLSTOY I'm like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he's cold, and his clothes are torn, and he's...
LEO TOLSTOY All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.
LEO TOLSTOY Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was...
LEO TOLSTOY Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had...
LEO TOLSTOY In infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is formed a bubble organism, and that bubbl...
LEO TOLSTOY Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was ...
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 He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happines...
LEO TOLSTOY One must be cunning and wicked in this world.
LEO TOLSTOY The only happy marriages I know are arranged ones.
LEO TOLSTOY Without the support from religion--remember, we talked about it--no father, using only his own resou...
LEO TOLSTOY