Leo Tolstoy

Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe. Only the truth gives me consolation – it is the one unbreakable diamond.

He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.

To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.

Here I am alive, and it’s not my fault, so I have to try and get by as best I can without hurting anybody until death takes over.

If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.

The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.

The intuitive recognition of the instant, thus reality… is the highest act of wisdom.

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the man himself.

We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.

The French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are.

My liver swells with bile difficult to repress.

He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds.

Do the thing and you will have the power. But they that do not the thing, had not the power.

The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.

New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion, and perhaps somebody