Leo Tolstoy

Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)

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

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)

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.

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)

The strongest of all warriors are these two -- Time and Patience.

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)

Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)

Crude, immoral, vulgar and senseless.

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)

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

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)

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.

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)

She had wit, she had grace, she had beauty; But above all, she had truth.

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy

Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)

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

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Chapter 1, first line

Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Chapter 1, first line

Leo Tolstoy

Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)

If one has no vanity in this life of ours, there is no sufficient reason for living.

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)

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.

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)

Everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)

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

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)

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

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)

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

Leo Tolstoy