Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and truth.

My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfilment of which I could consider reasonable. If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires I should not have known what to ask. If in moments of intoxication I felt something which, though not a wish, was a habit left by former wishes, in sober moments I knew this to be a delusion and that there was really nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guess of what it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless.

Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, thats like supposing the same candle could last you all your life

If only [people] understood that every thought is both false and true! False by one-sidenedness resulting from mans inability to embrace the whole truth, and true as an expression of one fact of human endeavor.

No one can attain to truth by himself. Only by laying stone on stone with the cooperation of all, by the millions of generations from our forefather Adam to our own times, is that temple reared which is to be a worthy dwelling place of the Great God.

Este incredibil cât de completă este iluzia care ne face să credem că frumuseţea este în genere bunătate.

Its all Gods will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.

God is the same everywhere.

He is not apprehended by reason, but by life.

How good is it to remember ones insignificance: that of a man among billions of men, of an animal amid billions of animals; and ones abode, the earth, a little grain of sand in comparison with Sirius and others, and ones life span in comparison with billions on billions of ages. There is only one significance, you are a worker. The assignment is inscribed in your reason and heart and expressed clearly and comprehensibly by the best among the beings similar to you. The reward for doing the assignment is immediately within you. But what the significance of the assignment is or of its completion, that you are not given to know, nor do you need to know it. It is good enough as it is. What else could you desire?

Dumnezeu este doar unul şi acelaşi pretutindeni.

How can it be that I’ve never seen that lofty sky before? Oh, how happy I am to have found it at last. Yes! It’s all vanity, it’s all an illusion, everything except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing – that’s all there is. But there isn’t even that. There’s nothing but stillness and peace. Thank God for that!

Our life has been joined, not by man, but by God. That union can only be severed by a crime, and a crime of that nature brings its own chastisement.

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

We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.

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.

truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good, and mans highest happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must live, we must love, and we must believe that we live not only today on this scrap of earth, but have lived and shall live

I led the life of so many other so-called respectable people,—that is, in debauchery. And like the majority, while leading the life of a debauche, I was convinced that I was a man of irreproachable morality.

I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books , music, love for ones neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?