Leo Tolstoy Quotes

"In historic events, the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself. Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of history and predestined from eternity."

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

"The two most powerful warriors are patience and time."

"There is trouble with a wife, but it's even worse with a woman who is not a wife"

"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."

"Music is the shorthand of emotion."

"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"

"Conceit is incompatible with understanding."

"Joy can be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness"

"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."

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"

"History would be an excellent thing if only it were true."

"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."

"Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us."

"Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy."

"He sends a cross, but He also sends the strength to bear it."

"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."

"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, it will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies."

"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."

"Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised."