Quotes By Leo Tolstoy

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

Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, that's like supposing the same candle could last you all your life

Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!

It is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame some one else, and especially the person nearest of all to him, for the ground of his dissatisfaction.

Eating meat is a leftover of the greatest brutality [killing]; the transition to vegetarianism is the first and most natural consequence of enlightenment.

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

A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it.

The best thoughts most often come in the morning after waking, while still in bed or while walking.

Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.

Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man's life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible.

The true office of any faith is to give life a meaning which death cannot destroy.

War is not a polite recreation but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that and not play at war.

The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.

The most mentally deranged people are certainly those who see in others indications of insanity they do not notice in themselves.

Better to know a few things which are good and necessary than many things which are useless and mediocre.

A new conception of life cannot be imposed on men; it can only be freely assimilated. And it can only be freely assimilated in two ways: onespiritual and internal, the other experimental and external.

Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.

If a man does not work at necessary and good things, then he will work at unnecessary and stupid things.

Every heart has its own skeletons.

Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.