Leo Tolstoy

Spring is the time of plans and projects.

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

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

Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.

To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.

When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.

When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.

The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself.

What is peculiar in the life of a man consists not in his obedience, but his opposition, to his instincts. In one direction or another he strives to live a supernatural life.

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

Whatever you have spend less.

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‘to do’ list.

They teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master.

A good conscience is a continual feast.

A man’s action is only a picture book of his creed.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

You sold me a dream and it shattered. I didn’t know how to put it back together again. So instead, I’m lovingly gluing those fragments anew with seams of gold, creating a vibrant new dream, rendering the broken strong and more than ever, breathtakingly beautiful.

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.