Leo Tolstoy Quotes

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If you want to be happy, be. 

Leo Tolstoy

The happiness of men consists in life. And life is in labor.

Leo Tolstoy (What Is To Be Done, 1886)

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

Leo Tolstoy

Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.

Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina, 1877)

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

Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace, 1869)

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

Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace, 1869)

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

Leo Tolstoy (Three Methods Of Reform, 1900)

Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.

Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace, 1869)

Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.

Leo Tolstoy (The Death of Ivan Ilych, 1886)

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Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.

Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace, 1869)

Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.

Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina, 1877)

Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six. 

Leo Tolstoy (Quoted in Uncommon Sense: The World's Fullest Compendium of Wisdom, 1987)

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

Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace, 1869)

We lost because we told ourselves we lost. 

Leo Tolstoy

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

Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina, 1877)

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

Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace, 1869)

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.

Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina, 1877)

Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.

Leo Tolstoy (What is Art?, 1897)

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If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.

Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina, 1877)

In order to obtain and hold power, a man must love it.

Leo Tolstoy (The Kingdom of God is Within You, 1894)

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

Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace, 1869)

If one has no vanity in this life of ours, there is no sufficient reason for living.

Leo Tolstoy (The Kreutzer Sonata, 1889)

Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth.

Leo Tolstoy (My Religion, 1884)

Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.

Leo Tolstoy (What is Art?, 1897)

If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.

Leo Tolstoy (The First Step)

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.

Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace, 1869)

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Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.

Leo Tolstoy

The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.

Leo Tolstoy (Confession, 1882)

The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.

Leo Tolstoy (Sevastopol in May, 1855)

Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.

Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina, 1877)

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