Leo Tolstoy

Music is the shorthand of emotion

If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.

It’s much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.

Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid.

My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and am in doubt most of the time.

Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?

What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.

People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.

I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep.

I don’t like needing anyone for anything.

Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.

Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.

That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem.

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.

Rest in reason; move in passion.

The public must and will be served.

If a man’s eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow.

Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.

Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.

He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.