Leo Tolstoy Quotes

Russian author (1828–1910)

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Lev Nikolayevitch Tolstoy [Ле́в Никола́евич Толсто́й, usually rendered Leo Tolstoy, or sometimes Tolstoi] (9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910) was a Russian writer, philosopher and social activist (social critic), whose novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina are internationally praised classics of world literature. He was a major influence on the development of Christian anarchism and pacifism, contributing to such nonviolent resistance movements as those of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Bevel.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Pen Names: Л. Н. Т. • Л. Н.

Birth Name: Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Native Name: Лев Никола́евич Толсто́й

Alternative Names: Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy • Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910 • Tolstoĭ, Lev Nikolaevich, graf, 1828-1910 • Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoĭ • Leo Tolstoi • Tolstoĭ, Lev Nikolaevich, graf • Tolstoy, Leo, graf

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Love those you hate you.

Something magical has happened to me: like a dream when one feels frightened and creepy, and suddenly wakes up to the knowledge that no such terrors exist. I have wakened up.

He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.

Yes, love, ...but not the love that loves for something, to gain something, or because of something, but that love that I felt for the first time, when dying, I saw my enemy and yet loved him. I knew that feeling of love which is the essence of the soul, for which no object is needed. And I know that blissful feeling now too. To love one's neighbours; to love one's enemies. To love everything - to Love God in all His manifestations. Some one dear to one can be loved with human love; but an enemy can only be loved with divine love. And that was why I felt such joy when I felt that I loved that man. What happened to him? Is he alive? ...Loving with human love, one may pass from love to hatred; but divine love cannot change. Nothing, not even death, can shatter it. It is the very nature of the soul. And how many people I have hated in my life. And of all people none I have loved and hated more than her.... If it were only possible for me to see her once more... once, looking into those eyes to say...

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.

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

All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.

I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.

"Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it."

- Vronksy {Anna Karenina}

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.

To get rid of an enemy one must love him.

Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe. Only the truth gives me consolation - it is the one unbreakable diamond.

"Can it be that I have not lived as one ought?" suddenly came into his head. "But how not so, when I've done everything as it should be done?"

I'm like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he's cold, and his clothes are torn, and he's ashamed, but he's not unhappy.

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