488 Inspiring Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

This is where the strength of the physician lies, be he a quack, a homeopath or an allopath. He supplies the perennial demand for comfort, the craving for sympathy that every human sufferer feels.

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.

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

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

Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture, so I need an inner light, which I feel I never have enough of in the autumn.

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.

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

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

Great works of art are only great because they are accessible and comprehensible to everyone.

Life is fragile and absurd.

Anna spoke not only naturally and intelligently, but intelligently and casually, without attaching any value to her own thoughts, yet giving great value to the thoughts of the one she was talking to.

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.

Dear Lord, what a madhouse the world is!

It is no sin to look at a nice girl.

She smiled at him, and at her own fears.

Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait ... there is nothing stronger than these two: patience and time, they will do it all.

And so he who looks down at his feet will not know the truth, but he who discerns by the sun which way to go.

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.

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

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

Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid.

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.

You should look in suffering for the seeds of your future spiritual growth, or the bitterness of suffering will be severe.

I had begun to feel that life was a repetition of the same thing; that there was nothing new either in me or in him; and that, on the contrary, we kept going back as it were on what was old.

I think that when you remember, remember, remember everything like that, you could go on until you remember what was there before you were in the world.

I feel that I am entitled to my share of lightheartedness and there is nothing wrong with enjoying one's self simply, like a boy.

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

It's wrong, what you say, and I beg you, if you're a good man,
to forget what you've said, as I forget it," she said at last.
"Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever
forget.

I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.

Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.

All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.

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.

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to the establishment of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by the recognition and profession of the truth by every man.

Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it.

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.

Reason unites us, not only with our contemporaries, but with men who lived two thousand years before us, and with those who will live after us.

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

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

History is the product of vast, amorphous and indecipherable social movements.

I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.

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.

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.

For if we allow that human life is always guided by reason, we destroy the premise that life is possible at all.

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.

One can no more approach people without love than one can approach bees without care. Such is the quality of bees.

I felt a wish never to leave that room -- a wish that dawn might never come, that my present frame of mind might never change.

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

It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else's mistakes.

The most important person is the one you are with in this moment.

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

ٰ"The Most difficult thing but an essential one -- is to love Life, to love it even while one suffers, because Life is all, Life is God, and to love Life means to love God.

Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!

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

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

Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it.

'Thou shalt not kill' does not apply to murder of one's own kind only, but to all living beings and this commandment was inscribed in the human breast long before it was proclaimed from Sinai.

Here I am alive, and it's not my fault, so I have to try and get by as best I can without hurting anybody until death takes over.

What am I coming for?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. "You know that I have come to be where you are," he said; "I can't help it.

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

Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.

If you make it a habit not to blame others, you will feel the growth of the ability to love in your soul, and you will see the growth of goodness in your life.

Man by violating his own feelings becomes cruel. And how deeply seated in the human heart is the injunction not to take life.

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

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

The essence of any religion lies solely in the answer to the question: why do I exist, and what is my relationship to the infinite universe that surrounds me?

Faith is the force of life.

And so the liberal tendency became a habit with Stepan Arkadyich, and he liked his newspaper, as he liked a cigar after dinner, for the slight haze it produced in his head.

Patriotism is the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers.

Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man in music, and in that is its power and significance.

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.

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

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.

Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow -- that is patience. The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.

Eating meat is a leftover of the greatest brutality killing; the transition to vegetarianism is the first and most natural consequence of enlightenment.

A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.

They were dealt with as in war, and they naturally employed the means that were used against them.

Kings are the slaves of history.

This history of culture will explain to us the motives, the conditions of life, and the thought of the writer or reformer.

Wealth brings a heavy purse; poverty, a light spirit.

Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it." -- Vronksy {Anna Karenina}.

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.

Our body is a machine for living.

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.

Each person's task in life is to become an increasingly better person.

From the child of five to myself is but a step. But from the newborn baby to the child of five is an appalling distance.

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

Children: a torment and nothing more.

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

To regard Christ as God, and to pray to him, are to my mind the greatest possible sacrilege.

That's my one desire, to be caught," answered Vronsky, with his serene,
good-humored smile. "If I complain of anything it's only that I'm not caught
enough, to tell the truth. I begin to lose hope.

What is important is not the length of life, but the depth of life. What is important is not to make life longer, but to take your soul out of time, as every sublime act does.

How strange it is that when I was a child I tried to be like a grownup, yet as soon as I ceased to be a child I often longed to be like one.

Live your life in such a way that you neither hide nor have a wish to display your life to people.

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.

Whenever my life came to a halt, the questions would arise: Why? And what next?

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.

When politics and home life have become one and the same thing, ... then,... it is evident that we will be in a state of total liberty or anarchy.

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

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

Everything intelligent is so boring.

Both salvation and punishment for man lie in the fact that if he lives wrongly he can befog himself so as not to see the misery of his position.

She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.

Am I mad, to see what others do not see, or are they mad who are responsible for all that I am seeing?

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

The struggle with evil by means of violence is the same as an attempt to stop a cloud, in order that there may be no rain.

Division of labor is a justification for sloth.

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.

In the midst of winter, I find within me the invisible summer.

A Christian cannot help being free, because in the pursuit and attainment of his object, no one can either hinder or retard him.

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.

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

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

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?

The only happy marriages I know are arranged ones.

Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?

A wise man looks for everything inside of himself; a madman seeks for everything in others.

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.

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.

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

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).

Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there in life any purpose which the inevitable death that awaits me does not undo and destroy?

Vegetarianism is the taproot of humanitarianism.

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.

Always wetweating-always wetweating!

Always the same. Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair rages, and always pain; always pain, always despair, and always the same.

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

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

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.

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

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.

If you want to be happy, be!

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.

A holy spirit lives within you.

Where there is love, there is God also.

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

Why nowadays there's a new fashion every day.

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

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.

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

Whatever question arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their buzzing on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum drowned and obscured the voices of those who were disputing honestly.

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

The same question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?"

Death destroys the body, as the scaffolding is destroyed after the building is up and finished. And he whose building is up rejoices at the destruction of the scaffolding and of the body.

There is no deed in this life so impossible that you cannot do it. Your whole life should be lived as an heroic deed.

Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.

Suddenly I heard the words of Christ and understood them, and life and death ceased to seem to me evil, and instead of despair I experienced happiness and the joy of life undisturbed by death.

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.

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

But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.

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.

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.

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

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

And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy.

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

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

The key to success in life is using the good thoughts of wise people.

He remembered his mother's love for him, and his family's, and his friends', and the enemy's intention to kill him seemed impossible.

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

He had learned that, as there is no situation in the world in which a man can be happy and perfectly free, so there is no situation in the world in which he can be perfectly unhappy and unfree.

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

Happy people have no history.

The more upset a person is with other people, and with circumstances, and the more satisfied he is with himself, the further he is from wisdom.

The teaching of the church, theoretically astute, is a lie in practice and a compound of vulgar superstitions and sorcery.

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

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

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

All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.

Every man and every living creature has a sacred right to the gladness of springtime.

I have discovered nothing new; I have only perceived what I already knew.

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

One needs a vision of the promised land in order to have the strength to move.

An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life--becoming a better person.

It seems to me that what we call beauty in a face lies in the smile.

He stepped down, avoiding any long look at her as one avoids long looks at the sun, but seeing her as one sees the sun, without looking.

If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace.

I say that the God who created the world in six days and who sent His son, and also his son himself, are not God, but that God is the one existing, incomparable good, the beginning of everything.

War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.

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

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.

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 Mormonism is able to endure, unmodified, until it reaches the third and fourth generation, it is destined to become the greatest power the world has ever known.

Government is violence, Christianity is meekness, non-resistance, love. And, therefore, government cannot be Christian, and a man who wishes to be a Christian must not serve government.

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.

And yet, now that years have passed, I recall it and wonder that it could distress me so much. It will be the same thing, too, with this trouble. Time will go by and I shall not mind about this either.

Without the support from religion -- remember, we talked about it -- no father, using only his own resources, would be able to bring up a child.

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

Live in the needs of the day.

Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is great matter.

An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life -- becoming a better person.

Woman is more impressionable than man. Therefore in the Golden Age they were better than men. Now they are worse.

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

You think that your laws correct evil -- they only increase it. There is but one way to end evil -- by rendering good for evil to all men without distinction.

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.

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.

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.

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

Violence produces only something resembling justice, but it distances people from the possibility of living justly, without violence.

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

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

All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom.

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

Progress consists only in the greater clarification of answers to the basic questions of life.

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.

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.

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.

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.

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

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..

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

What time can be more beautiful when the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute the sole motives of your life.

I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.

Read less, study less, but think more.

The business of art lies just in this, -- to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible.

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

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

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

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

Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live.

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.

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

All the true heroes of history will be forgotten and all the villains will be remembered as heroes.

If you want to be happy, be.

Just think! This whole world of ours is only a speck of mildew sprung up on a tiny planet, yet we think we can have something great -- thoughts,, actions! They are all but grains of sand.

Art is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feeling.

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

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

He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes like those in the world. There was only one creature in the world who could concentrate for him all the brightness and meaning of life. It was she. It was Kitty.

And not only the pride of intellect, but the stupidity of intellect. And, above all, the dishonesty, yes, the dishonesty of intellect. Yes, indeed, the dishonesty and trickery of intellect.

But there was something in her higher than what surrounded her. There was in her the glow of the real diamond among glass imitations.

My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and am in doubt most of the time.

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

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

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

Birthdays are of no importance to a rational being. It's a day like any other on which one has to do one's work.

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

The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind.

Meanwhile spring arrived. My old dejection passed away and gave place to the unrest which spring brings with it, full of dreams and vague hopes and desires.

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

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

The political is not compatible with the artistic, because the former, in order to prove, has to be one-sided.

Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs.

A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist.

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

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.

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.

The government in which I believe is that which is based on mere moral sanction...the real law lives in the kindness of our hearts. If our hearts are empty, no law or political reform can fill them.

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.

Since corrupt people unite amongst themselves to constitute a force, then honest people must do the same.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You can't imagine what a pleasure this complete laziness is to me: not a thought in my brain- you might send a ball rolling through it!

Boredom, the desire for desires.

Our whole life is taken up with anxiety for personal security, with preparations for living, so that we really never live at all.

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.

He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.

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.

To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.

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

Anything is better than lies and deceit!

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

We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is happiness. There is much, much before us.

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

The chief attraction of military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness.

Vegetarianism serves as the criterion by which we know that the pursuit of moral perfection on the part of humanity is genuine and sincere.

Much unhappiness has come from things left unsaid.

One must be cunning and wicked in this world.

Love alone is the only reasonable activity or pursuit of humankind....Fo r Love not only annihilates our fear of meaninglessness but empowers us to seek the happiness of others. And this indeed is our greatest happiness.

In the spiritual realm nothing is indifferent: what is not useful is harmful.

Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Kitty felt that Anna was perfectly unaffected and was not trying to conceal anything, but that she lived in another, higher world full of complex poetic interests beyond Kitty's reach.

The most important time is Now.

It is terrible when people do not know God, but it is worse when people identify as God what is not God.

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.

If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.

Yes indeed, of the essence... from the mouth of the Tsar!" came the sobbing voice of Count Rostov from the back. He hadn't heard a word, but in his own way he seemed to understand.

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.

Art is a microscope which the artist fixes on the secrets of his soul, and shows to people these secrets which are common to all.

When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.

What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the world!

Happiness is in your ability to love others.

An inner voice tells us we are in the wrong if we are idle.

The magnanimity and sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed: she is so kindhearted that she can't look at blood, but enjoys eating the calf served up with sauce.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If you want to be happy, be happy.

Man discovers truth by reason only, not by faith.

When I have one foot in the grave, I will tell the whole truth about women. I shall tell it, jump into my coffin, pull the lid over me and say, "Do what you like now.

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

The epitaph that I would write for history would say: I conceal nothing. It is not enough not to lie. One should strive not to lie in a negative sense by remaining silent.

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

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

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.

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?

Love those you hate you.

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

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

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.

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

Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won't come out for twenty years, if you really wish to learn.

Anna had the faculty of blushing.

As long as there are slaughterhouses there will be battlefields. A vegetarian diet is the acid test of humanitarianism.

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.

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

If you once realize that to-morrow, if not to-day, you will die and nothing will be left of you, everything becomes insignificant!

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

The best thoughts most often come in the morning after waking, while still in bed or while walking.

Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget.

He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.

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

The question of how things will settle down is the only important question.

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Art must destroy violence, only it can do it.

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

The ideas of the wise have been tested by centuries. Everything medium is lost and only original, deep and useful things are left.

Boredom: the desire for desires.

Vengeance is mine; I will repay.

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

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

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

The possibility of killing one's self is a safety valve. Having it, man has no right to say life is unbearable.

One may deal with things without love...but you cannot deal with men without it...It cannot be otherwise, because natural love is the fundamental law of human life.

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?

God knows, but He's waiting.