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

Unlock the wisdom of Leo Tolstoy, a literary genius. Explore his profound quotes on self-reflection, patience, love, and the essence of life. Dive into human nature and personal development.

Leo Tolstoy, widely considered one of the greatest authors of all time, was born in Russia in 1828. He gained recognition for his novels "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina," which are regarded as masterpieces of realist fiction. Tolstoy's literary success began in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy and Sevastopol Sketches, based on his experiences in the Crimean War. In addition to his novels, he wrote numerous short stories and novellas along with plays and essays exploring philosophical, moral, and religious themes.

In the 1870s, Tolstoy underwent a profound moral crisis that led to a significant spiritual awakening detailed in his non-fiction work "Confession." His interpretation of Jesus' teachings, notably the Sermon on the Mount, inspired him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance had a profound impact on influential figures of the 20th century like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Tolstoy also championed Georgism, an economic philosophy by Henry George, which he incorporated into his writing—particularly in his novel "Resurrection." His lasting legacy extends beyond literature as an advocate for peace, nonviolence, and social justice.

✵ 28. August 1828 – 7. November 1910  •  Other names Lev Tolstoj, Lev N. Tolstoj, Лев Толстой
Leo Tolstoy photo
Leo Tolstoy: 456 quotes64 likes

Leo Tolstoy Quotes

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

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“But that's the whole aim of civilization: to make everything a source of enjoyment.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“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.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“The only happy marriages I know are arranged ones.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“And where love ends, hate begins”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“These joys were so trifling as to be as imperceptible as grains of gold among the sand, and in moments of depression she saw nothing but the sand; yet there were brighter moments when she felt nothing but joy, saw nothing but the gold.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“People of limited intelligence are fond of talking about "these days," imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of "these days" and that human nature changes with the times.”

Leo Tolstoy

“In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“History would be a wonderful thing – if it were only true.”

Leo Tolstoy

“He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. "Where is it? What death?" There was no fear because there was no death.

In place of death there was light.”

Leo Tolstoy

Source: The Death of Ivan Ilych

“He knew she was there by the joy and fear that overwhelmed his heart.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

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

“We are all created to be miserable, and that we all know it, and all invent means of deceiving each other. And when one sees the truth, what is one to do?”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“He had the unlucky capacity many men have of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to take any serious part in it.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“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.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“the very fact of the death of someone close to them aroused in all who heard about it, as always, a feeling of delight that he had died and they hadn't.”

Leo Tolstoy

Source: The Death of Ivan Ilych

“He did what heroes do after their work is accomplished; he died.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

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

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what?… All will end in death, all!”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.”

Leo Tolstoy book A Confession

Source: A Confession

“I think that to find out what love is really like, one must first make a mistake and then put it right.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“The example of a syllogism that he had studied in Kiesewetter's logic: Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal, had throughout his whole life seemed to him right only in relation to Caius, but not to him at all.”

Leo Tolstoy

Source: The Death of Ivan Ilych

“Smiling with pleasure, they went through their memories, not sad, old people's memories, but poetic, youthful ones, those impressions from the very distant past where dream merges with reality, and they laughed softly, rejoicing at something.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“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”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“It's like scarlet fever: one has to get it over."

"Then one should invent a way of inoculating love, like vaccination.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“Art begins when a man, with a purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs.”

Leo Tolstoy

“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.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“There was no solution, save that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insolvable: One must live in the needs of the day--that is, forget oneself.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“Progress consists, not in the increase of truth, but in freeing it from its wrappings. The truth is obtained like gold, not by letting it grow bigger, but by washing off from it everything that isn't gold.”

Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy's Diaries (1985) edited and translated by R. F. Christian. London: Athlone Press, Vol 2, p. 512
Context: People usually think that progress consists in the increase of knowledge, in the improvement of life, but that isn't so. Progress consists only in the greater clarification of answers to the basic questions of life. The truth is always accessible to a man. It can't be otherwise, because a man's soul is a divine spark, the truth itself. It's only a matter of removing from this divine spark (the truth) everything that obscures it. Progress consists, not in the increase of truth, but in freeing it from its wrappings. The truth is obtained like gold, not by letting it grow bigger, but by washing off from it everything that isn't gold.

“I can't praise a young lady who is alive only when people are admiring her, but as soon as she is left alone, collapses and finds nothing to her taste--one who is all for show and has no resources in herself”

Leo Tolstoy book Family Happiness

Source: Family Happiness

“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”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“They ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“Death is finished, he said to himself. It is no more!”

Leo Tolstoy

Source: The Death of Ivan Ilych

“If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side!”

Leo Tolstoy

“And all people live, not by reason of any care they have for themselves, but by the love for them that is in other people.”

Leo Tolstoy

“A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others.”

Leo Tolstoy book Family Happiness

Part 1, chapter 2 http://books.google.com/books?id=eWU4AAAAYAAJ&amp;q=%22there+is+only+one+enduring+happiness+in+life+to+live+for+others%22&amp;pg=PA22#v=onepage <br class="br">Family Happiness (1859) <br class="br">Variant: There is only one enduring happiness in life&amp;mdash; to live for others.

“Time and Patience.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“… the more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“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.”

Leo Tolstoy book Family Happiness

Variant: I want movement, not a calm course of existence. I want excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I feel in myself a superabundance of energy which finds no outlet in our quiet life.
Source: Family Happiness

“Rest, nature, books, music…such is my idea of happiness.”

Leo Tolstoy

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

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“It's not so much that he can't fall in love, but he has not the weakness necessary.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina