Leo Tolstoy Quotes

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456 Quotes on Self-Reflection, Patience, Love, and the Essence of Life

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

“But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.”

“If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.”

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

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

“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.”

“Love those you hate you.”

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

“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.”

“Something magical has happened to me: like a dream when one feels frightened and creepy, and suddenly wakes up to the knowledge that no such terrors exist. I have wakened up.”

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

“Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget…”

“Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it."

- Vronksy {Anna Karenina}”

“Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe. Only the truth gives me consolation - it is the one unbreakable diamond.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Every heart has its own skeletons.”

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

“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.”

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

“Everything depends on upbringing.”

“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.”

“Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”

“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.”

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

“And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.”

“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.”

“A king is history's slave.”

“God is the same everywhere.”

“Life did not stop, and one had to live.”

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

“Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor.”

“Enough or not… it will have to do”

“There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.”