Leo Tolstoy: Quotes about life

Leo Tolstoy was Russian writer. Explore interesting quotes on life.
Leo Tolstoy: 912 quotes64 likes

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

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

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

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

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

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

Leo Tolstoy book A Confession

Source: Confession (1882), Ch. 5, translated by David Patterson, 1983
Source: A Confession

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

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

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

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“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.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

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

Leo Tolstoy The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Source: The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), Ch. II
Source: The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories

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

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“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.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Pt. 1, ch. 2
Source: Anna Karenina (1875–1877; 1878)

“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

“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

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

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

“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

“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

“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.

“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

“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

“There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth.”

Leo Tolstoy The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Source: The Kingdom of God Is Within You