Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

About Leo Tolstoy:

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian novelist regarded as one of the greatest of all time.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

But that's the whole aim of civilization: to make everything a source of enjoyment.

Leo Tolstoy

But the older he grew and the more intimately he came to know his brother, the oftener the thought occurred to him that the power of working for the general welfare – a power of which he felt himself entirely destitute – was not a virtue but rath...

Leo Tolstoy

He felt that he was himself and did not wish to be anyone else. He only wished now to be better than he had been formerly

Leo Tolstoy

Perhaps it's because I appreciate all I have so much that I don't worry about what I haven't got.

Leo Tolstoy

He saw either death or the approach of it everywhere. But his undertaking now occupied him all the more. He had to live his life to the end, until death came. Darkness covered everything for him; but precisely because of this darkness he felt that hi...

Leo Tolstoy

The Lord had given them the day and the Lord had given them the strength. And the day and the strength had been dedicated to labor, and the labor was its reward. Who was the labor for? What would be its fruits? These were irrelevant and idle question...

Leo Tolstoy

And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.

Leo Tolstoy

In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair, and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still stronger and purer. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before...

Leo Tolstoy

God forgive me everything!’ she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling...

Leo Tolstoy

The more mental effort he made the clearer he saw that it was undoubtedly so: that he had really forgotten and overlooked one little circumstance in life - that Death would come and end everything, so that it was useless to begin anything, and that t...

Leo Tolstoy

He soon felt that the realization of his desire had given him only a grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the eternal error people make in imagining that happiness is the realization of desires.

Leo Tolstoy

The very nastiest and coarsest, I can't tell you. It is not grief, not dullness, but much worse. It is as if all that was good in me had hidden itself, and only what is horrid remains.

Leo Tolstoy

He looked at her as a man might look at a faded flower he had plucked, in which it was difficult for him to trace the beauty that had made him pick and so destroy it

Leo Tolstoy

Whether he was acting ill or well he did not know, and far from laying down the law about it, he now avoided talking or thinking about it. Thinking about it led him into doubts and prevented him from seeing what he should and should not do. But when ...

Leo Tolstoy

In my considered opinion, salary is payment for goods delivered and it must conform to the law of supply and demand. If, therefore, the fixed salary is a violation of this law - as, for instance, when I see two engineers leaving college together and ...

Leo Tolstoy

To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.

Leo Tolstoy

Are we not all flung into the world for no other purpose than to hate each other, and so to torture ourselves and one another?

Leo Tolstoy

Without knowledge of what I am and why I am here, it is impossible to live, and since I cannot know that, I cannot live either. In an infinity of time, in an infinity of matter, and an infinity of space a bubble-organism emerges while will exist for ...

Leo Tolstoy

Vronsky saw nothing and no one. He felt himself as a king, not because she had made an impression on Anna-he did not yet believe that-but because the impression she had made on him gave him happiness and pride.

Leo Tolstoy

Deliberately she shrouded the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in the faintly perceptible smile.

Leo Tolstoy

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Leo Tolstoy

Author Bio

  • NameLeo Tolstoy
  • DescriptionRussian writer
  • AliasesTolstoi; Tolstoy
  • BornAugust 28, 1828
  • DiedNovember 7, 1910
  • CountryRussian Empire
  • ProfessionWriter; Playwright; Philosopher; Novelist; Esperantist; Children's Writer; Educationist
  • WorksWar And Peace; Anna Karenina; A Confession; The Kingdom Of God Is Within You; Sebastopol Sketches; What Is Art?; What Is To Be Done?; Boyhood; Childhood; The Cossacks; The Death Of Ivan Ilyich; Family Happiness; Hadji Murat; The Kreutzer Sonata; Resurrection; The Forged Coupon; Youth; The Fruits Of Enlightenment; The Light Shines In The Darkness; The Living Corpse; The Power Of Darkness; The Devil; Albert; Alyosha The Pot; The Big Oven; Croesus And Fate; Father Sergius; God Sees The Truth, But Waits; The Grain; How Much Land Does A Man Need?; Ivan The Fool (story); Kholstomer; A Lost Opportunity; Master And Man; Promoting A Devil; Quench The Spark; The Raid; Repentance; The Snowstorm; The Three Hermits; Three Deaths; The Three Questions; Too Dear!; What Men Live By; Where Love Is, God Is; Wisdom Of Children; Work, Death, And Sickness