Top 500 Leo Tolstoy Quotes (2023 Update)

1. “If you want to be happy, be.”

— Leo Tolstoy

Featured in: Happiness Quotes

2. “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”

— Leo Tolstoy

Featured in: Patience Quotes

3. “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

— Leo Tolstoy

Featured in: Change Quotes

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

— Leo Tolstoy

5. “The strongest of all warriors are these two – Time and Patience.”

— Leo Tolstoy

Featured in: Patience Quotes

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

— Leo Tolstoy

7. “When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.”

— Leo Tolstoy

8. “Love is the only way to rescue humanity from all ills.”

— Leo Tolstoy

Featured in: Quotes About Humanity, Love Is Quotes

9. “We are asleep until we fall in love.”

— Leo Tolstoy

10. “Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”

— Leo Tolstoy

11. “If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.”

— Leo Tolstoy

12. “The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.”

— Leo Tolstoy

Featured in: Quotes About Humanity

13. “Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”

— Leo Tolstoy

14. “Boredom: the desire for desires.”

— Leo Tolstoy

15. “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

Featured in: Math Quotes

16. “Happy people have no history.”

— Leo Tolstoy

Featured in: History Quotes, Quotes About People

17. “Music is the shorthand of emotion.”

— Leo Tolstoy

Featured in: Music Quotes

18. “What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you deal with incompatibility.”

— Leo Tolstoy

Featured in: Relationship Quotes, Marriage Quotes, Love You Quotes

19. “If you’re not enjoying your work, you should either change your attitude, or change your job.”

— Leo Tolstoy

20. “There is only one time that is important – NOW! It is the most important time because it is the only time hat we have any power.”

— Leo Tolstoy

Featured in: Important Quotes

21. “He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”

— Leo Tolstoy

Featured in: Romance Quotes, Romantic Quotes

22. “Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow – that is patience. The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”

— Leo Tolstoy

Featured in: Patience Quotes, Powerful Quotes

23. “It's hard to love a woman and do anything.”

— Leo Tolstoy

24. “The most important time is Now.”

— Leo Tolstoy

25. “All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.”

— Leo Tolstoy

26. “Read less, study less, but think more.”

— Leo Tolstoy

Featured in: Study Quotes

27. “If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.”

— Leo Tolstoy

28. “The key to success in life is using the good thoughts of wise people.”

— Leo Tolstoy

29. “The only purpose of education is freedom; the only method is experience.”

— Leo Tolstoy

30. “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.”

— Leo Tolstoy

31. “Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.”

— Leo Tolstoy

Featured in: Quotes About Waiting

32. “There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.”

— Leo Tolstoy

33. “An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person’s main task in life – becoming a better person.”

— Leo Tolstoy

34. “There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.”

— Leo Tolstoy

35. “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

Featured in: Health Quotes, Quotes About Veganism

36. “As long as there are slaughter houses there will always be battlefields.”

— Leo Tolstoy

37. “Many people have ideas on how others should change; few people have ideas on how they should change.”

— Leo Tolstoy

38. “It is not enough to be a hardworking person. Think: what do you work at?”

— Leo Tolstoy

39. “Let us forgive each other – only then will we live in peace.”

— Leo Tolstoy

40. “It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

Featured in: Quotes About Trust, Truth Quotes

42. “Just as one candle lights another and can light thousands of other candles, so one heart illuminates another heart and can illuminate thousands of other hearts.”

— Leo Tolstoy

43. “Life is fragile and absurd.”

— Leo Tolstoy

44. “The legislation of Quran will spread all over the world, because it agrees with the mind, logic and wisdom.”

— Leo Tolstoy

Featured in: Mind Quotes, Quotes About World

45. “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.”

— Leo Tolstoy

Featured in: Truth Quotes

46. “In the midst of winter, I find within me the invisible summer...”

— Leo Tolstoy

Featured in: Summer Quotes

47. “Each person’s task in life is to become an increasingly better person.”

— Leo Tolstoy

48. “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

Featured in: Love You Quotes

49. “Upon meeting, you’re judged by your clothes, upon parting you’re judged by your wits.”

— Leo Tolstoy

50. “Perfection is impossible without humility. Why should I strive for perfection, if I am already good enough?”

— Leo Tolstoy

Featured in: Perfection Quotes, Humility Quotes