Leo Tolstoy quotes page 1

1828-1910, Russian author

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.
Leo Tolstoy

All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo Tolstoy

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.
Leo Tolstoy

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Leo Tolstoy

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

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he
participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.
Leo Tolstoy

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

Boredom: The desire for desires.
Leo Tolstoy

Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
Leo Tolstoy

Great works of art are only great because they are accessible and comprehensible to
everyone.
Leo Tolstoy

If you want to be happy, be.
Leo Tolstoy

Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without
fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This
state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking.
Leo Tolstoy

When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.
Leo Tolstoy

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.
Leo Tolstoy

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

It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty.
Leo Tolstoy

There is no significant idea which cannot be explained to an intelligent twelve year old boy in
fifteen minutes.
Leo Tolstoy

Music is the shorthand of emotion.
Leo Tolstoy

One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between man and nature shall not be
broken.
Leo Tolstoy

To get rid of an enemy one must love him.
Leo Tolstoy

Anything is better than lies and deceit!
Leo Tolstoy

Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.
Leo Tolstoy

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all
else is folly.
Leo Tolstoy

We lost because we told ourselves we lost.
Leo Tolstoy

Two horses were carrying two loads. The front horse went well, but the rear horse was lazy.
The men began to pile the rear horse's load on the front horse; when they had transferred it
all, the rear horse found it easy going, and he said to the front horse: "Toil and sweat! The
more you try, the more you have to suffer." When they reached the tavern, the owner said:
"Why should I fodder two horses when I carry all on one? I had better give the one all the
food it wants, and cut the throat of the other; at least I shall have the hide." And so he did.
Leo Tolstoy

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
Leo Tolstoy

The idea of beauty is the fundamental idea of everything. In the world we see only
distortions of the fundamental idea, but art, by imagination, may lift itself to the height of
this idea. Art is therefore akin to creation.
Leo Tolstoy

Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same
necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.
Leo Tolstoy

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