Leo Tolstoy

There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.

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

They’ve got no idea what happiness is, they don’t know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us–there is no life.

I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.

She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.

I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.

You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.

Events tend to recur in cycles…

Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Piety practiced in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendor of beneficence.

Do the thing and you will have the power. But they that do not the thing, had not the power.

Man is the only creature who has a nasty mind.

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be.

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.

Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the rest.

They say that history repeats itself, so if you don’t learn from the past you will make the same mistakes. So I have become an archaeologist of my own history. Digging up what has long since been buried, exhuming those forgotten fragments. Trying to distinguish what is real from folklore, trying to gain understanding, rather than relying on myths.

The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.