Leo Tolstoy: Trending quotes

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

“Everything I know, I know because of love.”

“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.”

Thoughts of Prince Andrew Bk XII, Ch. 16
Variant: All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.
Source: War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869)
Context: Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.

“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.”

Source: Anna Karenina

“All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.”

Source: War and Peace

“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.”

Variant: All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.
Source: Anna Karenina

“Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.”

Source: Anna Karenina, Vol 1 of 8

“Music is the shorthand of emotion”

“How can one be well… when one suffers morally?”

“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.”

Source: War and Peace

“Every heart has its own skeletons.”

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

Source: Anna Karenina

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

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

Source: 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.”

Source: War and Peace

“Everything depends on upbringing.”

Source: Anna Karenina

“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.”

Variant: Everything intelligent is so boring.
Source: War and Peace

“Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”

Pt. I, ch. 9
Variant: 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.
Source: Anna Karenina (1875–1877; 1878)

“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 any means possible, except getting off his back.”