35 Leo Tolstoy Quotes that Explore All Life’s Aspects

Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live.

Boredom: the desire for desires.

We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening.

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

One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.

If you want to be happy, be.

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.

Kings are the slaves of history.

Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.

Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself.

We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.

When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

I am sure that nothing has such a decisive influence upon a man's course as his personal appearance, and not so much his appearance as his belief in its attractiveness or unattractiveness.

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.

And all people live, Not by reason of any care they have for themselves, But by the love for them that is in other people.