Leo Tolstoy

Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.

If you want to be happy, be.

The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness…

In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning.

All happy families are alike, but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion.

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.

Love is the absence of judgment.

Love is what we’re born with. Fear is what we learned here.

Have you ever been so melancholy, that you wanted to fit in the palm of your beloved’s hand? And lie there, for fortnights, or decades, or the length of time between stars? In complete silence?

I’m standing in the ashes of who I used to be.

Loving can cost a lot but not loving always costs more, and those who fear to love often find that want of love is an emptiness that robs the joy from life.

Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.

He’s out his head, I’m out my mind. We got that love, the crazy kind.

My wish for us all is to love and adore ourselves just as much as we do everyone else!

I can’t help this awful energy. God damn right, you should be scared of me.

Provided that he only broke you into pieces, you still have it all, like a pizza in slices, every. bite, delicious. You may not feel whole, but you are no less because of a feeling.

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

When you fall in love, you wanna share it with people but you know there are some things that you need to keep to yourself, ’cause privacy makes things last longer, I feel.

What’s the difference?’ I asked him, ‘Between the love of your life and your soulmate?’ ‘One is a choice, and one is not.’

To the people who love you, you are beautiful already. This is not because they’re blind to your shortcomings but because they so clearly see your soul. Your shortcomings then dim by comparison. The people who care about you are willing to let you be imperfect and beautiful, too.

It’s amazing what passes for love these days – crows parading as blue jays.