Leo Tolstoy Quotes

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

“A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, 'Today I'm going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.”

“In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning.”

“One must be cunning and wicked in this world.”

“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.”

“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.”

“To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.”

“All that day she had had the feeling that she was playing in the theatre with actors better than herself and that her poor playing spoiled the whole thing.”

“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.”

“In the midst of winter, I find within me the invisible summer…”

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

“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.”

“There will be today, there will be tomorrow, there will be always, and there was yesterday, and there was the day before…”

“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.”

“Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult.”

“Can it be that I have not lived as one ought?" suddenly came into his head. "But how not so, when I've done everything as it should be done?”

“she smiled at him, and at her own fears.”

“I ask one thing: I ask the right to hope and suffer as I do now."
Vronsky”

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

“Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of people--that's in your hands.”

“In infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is formed a bubble organism, and that bubble lasts a while and bursts, and that bubble is Me.”

“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.”

“Energy rests upon love; and come as it will, there's no forcing it.”

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

“Teach French and unteach sincerity.”

“He liked fishing and seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation.”

“There can be no peace for us, only misery, and the greatest happiness.”

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

“We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them.”

“There it is!' he thought with rapture. 'When I was already in despair, and when it seemed there would be no end- there it is! She loves me. She's confessed it.”

“When one's head is gone one doesn't weep over one's hair!”

“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.”

“One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love.”

“There are as many kinds of love, as there are hearts”

“The pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in searching for it.”

“He felt that he was himself and did not wish to be anyone else. He only wished now to be better than he had been formerly”

“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.”

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

“A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it.”

“I don't allow myself to doubt myself even for a moment.”

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

“the same question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?"… p982”

“In all human sorrow nothing gives comfort but love and faith, and that in the sight of Christ's compassion for us no sorrow is trifling.”

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

“Ah, if everyone was as sensitive as you! There's no girl who hasn't gone through that. And it's all so unimportant!”

“I don't want to prove anything; I merely want to live, to do no one harm but myself. I have the right to do that, haven't I?”

“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. To become oblivious in dreams was impossible now, at least till night-time; it was impossible to return to that music sung by carafe-women; and so one had to become oblivious in the dreams of life.”

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

“God forgive me everything!’ she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling…”

“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.”