Tolstoy is best known for his novels, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and The Death of Ivan Ilyich, which are to date one of the finest novels ever written. Read some of the best Leo Tolstoy quotes on life, love, society, war, and humanity that will inspire you to explore all aspects of life.
Leo Tolstoy was a Russian author, a genius of realistic fiction, and one of the world’s greatest novelists.
Born to an aristocratic Russian family, Tolstoy achieved success in the writing world during his twenties, when he published a trilogy of novels namely; Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth.
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He often explored themes of love, family, morality, and the search for meaning in life. And besides being a writer, Tolstoy was also a philosopher and had strong beliefs in nonviolence, simplicity, and the importance of living an authentic life.
His ideas have influenced many people around the world and continue to be relevant today.
While many people think that Tolstoy was just a great novelist but very few are aware that he also was one of the most social and political thinkers.
Here are some of our favorite quotes by Leo Tolstoy who reminded people about the importance of living a simple and meaningful life.
Top 10 Leo Tolstoy Quotes
- “If you want to be happy, be.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “The most important knowledge is that which guides the way you lead your life.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.” – Leo Tolstoy
Best Leo Tolstoy Quotes
- “True life is lived when tiny changes occur.” – Leo Tolstoy
leo tolstoy quotes - “We lost because we told ourselves we lost.” – Leo Tolstoy
tolstoy quotes - “If you want to be happy, try only to please God, not people.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “It’s much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “If one has no vanity in this life of ours, there is no sufficient reason for living.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “It’s all God’s will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.” – Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
- “One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Seize the moments of happiness, love, and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “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.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Pay bad people with your goodness; fight with your kindness. Even if you do not achieve victory over other people, you will conquer yourself.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “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.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Just as one candle lights another and can light thousands of other candles, so one heart illuminate another heart and can illuminate thousands of other hearts.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator the smaller the fraction.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself.” – Leo Tolstoy
Inspirational Leo Tolstoy Quotes
- “Boredom: the desire for desires.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Anything is better than lies and deceit!” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Let us forgive each other – only then will we live in peace.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “The best stories don’t come from ‘good vs. bad’ but ‘good vs. good’.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Each person’s task in life is to become an increasingly better person.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “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.” – Leo Tolstoy
Famous Quotes By Leo Tolstoy
- “Be bad, but at least don’t be a liar, a deceiver!” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?” – Leo Tolstoy
- “It is not beauty that endears, it’s love that makes us see beauty.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “I often think that men don’t understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much compatible you are but how you deal with incompatibility.” – 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.” – Leo Tolstoy
Memorable Quotes From Leo Tolstoy
- “Music is the shorthand of emotion” ― Leo Tolstoy
- “Spring is the time of plans and projects.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “The pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in searching for it.” – Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
- “If one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be…” – Leo Tolstoy
- “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.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.” – Leo Tolstoy
More About Leo Tolstoy’s Life
Apart from Tolstoy’s literary accomplishments, he also advocated for social and political reforms. Inspired by his new faith that mixed pacifism with Christian anarchism, he promoted nonviolent resistance.
Leo Tolstoy’s ideas on nonviolent resistance were exemplified in ‘The Kingdom of God Is Within You’, and were inspiration for civil rights activists like Mahatma Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States of America.
Tolstoy died on 20 November 1910 at the age of 82.
Conclusion
Which of these Leo Tolstoy quotes and sayings is your favorite? Do you have any other favorite quote that you want to add to the list?
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