Leo Tolstoy
Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)
Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.
Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conlusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleages, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
The strongest of all warriors are these two -- Time and Patience.
What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
She had wit, she had grace, she had beauty; But above all, she had truth.
Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
If one has no vanity in this life of ours, there is no sufficient reason for living.
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.
Everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.
What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.
Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.