Whether it’s love or society, Tolstoy has commented on every aspect concerning life and aced it all. That’s why even after around two centuries, his words still make so much sense.
Russian writer Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 and is best known for his two longest works, War and Peace and Anna Karenina. He died in 1910 and since then has been regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time with a profound influence on other great personalities like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
Leo Tolstoy came from an aristocratic Russian family, though lost both his parents and grandmother before he became a teenager. Despite being surrounded by the death Leo tried to preserve the happiest moments from his childhood. His much-appreciated work is often described as a piece of life, sharing a vision of human experience rooted in an appreciation of simple virtues.
Tolstoy’s new faith also attracted attention, a combination of pacifism and Christian anarchism for which he advocated living a morally and physically ascetic lifestyle.
A master of realistic fiction, Tolstoy’s novels are even today, ranked amongst the best in the world and counted amongst the finest ever written. His spiritual belief, religious sentiments and literary brilliance shine through the words he left us with, to embrace love and change through everyday life.
1. Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
2. Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself.
3. The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.
4. The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.
5. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.
6. A truly wise man is always joyful.
7. In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
8. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.
9. Life could be limitless joy, if we would only take it for what it is, in the way it is given to us.
10. Pay bad people with your goodness; fight their hatred with you kindness. Even if you do not achieve victory over other people, you will conquer yourself.
11. History would be an excellent thing if only it were true.
12. A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator the smaller the fraction.
13. Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
14. We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.
15. A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul.
16. I’ve always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.
17. Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.
18. There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.
19. All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
20. Conceit is incompatible with understanding.
21. I think… if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.
22. He sends a cross, but He also sends the strength to bear it.
23. Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.
24. What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness! A beautiful woman utters absurdities: we listen, and we hear not the absurdities but wise thoughts.
25. The most important knowledge is that which guides the way you lead your life.
26. Some mathematician said: ‘Pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in seeking it.’
27. I often think that men don’t understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.
28. Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.
29. Spring is the time of plans and projects.
30. Anything is better than lies and deceit!
31. We lost because we told ourselves we lost.
32. If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
33. If you want to be happy....Be.
34. Each person’s task in life is to become an increasingly better person.
35. 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.
36. I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means – except by getting off his back.
37. Just as one candle lights another and can light thousands of other candles, so one heart illuminates another heart and can illuminate thousands of other hearts.
38. It’s not given to people to judge what’s right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.
39. If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one’s reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state.
40. True life is lived when tiny changes occur.
41. Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.
42. The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.
43. Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.
44. The only thing that we know is that we know nothing and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.
45. When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.
46. Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.
47. If one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be…
48. Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.
49. There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.
50. Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?
51. Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.
52. 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.
53. You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.
54. He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.
55. Don't seek God in temples. He is close to you. He is within you. Only you should surrender to Him and you will rise above happiness and unhappiness.
56. 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 one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.
57. Joy can be real only if people look on their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.
58. If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.
59. One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.
60. 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…
61. One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love.
62. Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.
63. It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
64. You see, if you take pains and learn in order to get a reward, the work will seem hard; but when you work… if you love your work, you will find your reward in that.
65. Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.
66. There is trouble with a wife, but it's even worse with a woman who is not a wife.
67. In saying that without the power of the state, evil men would rule over the good. It is taken for granted that the good are precisely those who at the present time have power, and the bad the same who are no subjugated.
68. Let us forgive each other – only then will we live in peace.