Authors — Quotes

Leo Tolstoy Quotes: 72

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Anna Karenina
True life is lived when tiny changes occur.
If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.
Anna Karenina
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
The Kreutzer Sonata
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.
Anna Karenina
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.
Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.
Anna Karenina
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.
Anna Karenina
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.
Essays, Letters and Miscellanies
Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.
We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.
War and Peace
If you want to be happy, be.
In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.
Anna Karenina
A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.
Family Happiness
Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand."- Anna Karenina {Anna Karenina}
Anna Karenina
Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.
A Confession
All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.
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.
Anna Karenina
Boredom: the desire for desires.
Muhammad has always been standing higher than the Christianity. He does not consider god as a human being and never makes himself equal to God. Muslims worship nothing except God and Muhammad is his Messenger. There is no any mystery and secret in it.
There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.
War and Peace
The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad"but "good vs. good.
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.
Anna Karenina
If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace.
Anna Karenina
It's hard to love a woman and do anything.
Anna Karenina
Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy.
War and Peace
You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.
War and Peace
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...
War and Peace
Love those you hate you.
Anna Karenina
He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.
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.
If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.
War and Peace
He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.
Anna Karenina
We are asleep until we fall in Love!
War and Peace
I'm like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he's cold, and his clothes are torn, and he's ashamed, but he's not unhappy.
Anna Karenina
I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.
Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself.
War and Peace
Everything I know, I know because of love.
War and Peace
To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.
It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.
War and Peace
Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it.
War and Peace
There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.
Anna Karenina
And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.
Anna Karenina
We walked to meet each other up at the time of our love and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions, and there's no altering that.
Anna Karenina
God is the same everywhere.
War and Peace
Life did not stop, and one had to live.
War and Peace
In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning.
War and Peace