Leo Tolstoy

Be bad, but at least don’t be a liar, a deceiver!

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.

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

Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand. (Anna Karenina)

But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.

Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain’t so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.

We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.

Nothing astonishes people so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Philebus was saying that enjoyment and pleasure and delight, and the class of feelings akin to them, are a good to every living being, whereas I contend, that not these, but wisdom and intelligence and memory, and their kindred, right opinion and true reasoning, are better and more desirable than pleasure

Courtesy Life be not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.

Society therefore is an ancient as the world.

In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities.

Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with a cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

But men must know, that in this theatre of man’s life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.