Leo Tolstoy

Life did not stop, and one had to live.

Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won’t come out for twenty years, if you really wish to learn.

Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.

I think… if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.

Kings are the slaves of history.

What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you deal with incompatibility.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

Knowledge always demands increase; it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but will afterwards always propagate itself.

And deep in my heart. The answer, it was in me. And I made up my mind. To define my own destiny.

You should always own a black dress because no one ever remembers a black dress.

The only sin that we never forgive in each other is a difference in opinion.

I heartily accept the motto,That government is best which governs least; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

Although the road is never ending, take a step and keep walking, do not look fearfully into the distance…on the path let the heart be your guide for the body is hesitant and full of fear.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

You must often make erasures if you mean to write what is worthy of being read a second time; and don’t labor for the admiration of the crowd, but be content with a few choice readers.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree. We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

Do what you know and perception is converted into character.

Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet our feet to get it! Is the scholastic air any advantage?