Leo Tolstoy

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.

The best stories don’t come from ‘good vs. bad’ but ‘good vs. good.’

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

The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.

It’s hard to love a woman and do anything.

I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor.

We are apt to love praise, but not deserve it. But if we would deserve it, we must love virtue more than that.

Clever tyrants are never punished.

Only in the darkness can you see the stars.

Blame is safer than praise.

The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England.

Round numbers are always false.

What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, — so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, or how to say any thing to such? No matter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be frivolous. Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips. The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

Poets wish to profit or to please.

Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.

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

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.

Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced.

Was there ever such an autumn? And yet there was never such a panic and hard times in the commercial world. The merchants and banks are suspending and failing all the country over, but not the sandbanks, solid and warm, and streaked with bloody blackberry vines.You may run upon them as much as you please – even as the crickets do, and find their account in it. They are the stockholders in these banks, and I hear them creaking their content.