Leo Tolstoy

It’s not given to people to judge what’s right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.

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

To get rid of an enemy one must love him.

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

Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.

Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.

All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.

There are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe… the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press down here.

The quieter you become, the more you can hear.

God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.

Words are finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimensions of what is in truth. They break, chop, and impoverish it.

Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.

The serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself.

Youth is unduly busy with pampering the outer person.

Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few.

We are in fact convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. It seems, to judge from the argument, that the wisdom which we desire and upon which we profess to have set our hearts will be attainable only when we are dead and not in our lifetime.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.

Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.

It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence.