Top 500 Leo Tolstoy Quotes (2023 Update)
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101. “Kings are the slaves of history.”

— Leo Tolstoy

102. “Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.”

— Leo Tolstoy

103. “Happiness is in your ability to love others.”

— Leo Tolstoy

104. “He never chooses an opinion; he just wears whatever happens to be in style.”

— Leo Tolstoy

105. “One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love.”

— Leo Tolstoy

106. “A holy spirit lives within you.”

— Leo Tolstoy

107. “All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.”

— Leo Tolstoy

108. “Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.”

— Leo Tolstoy

109. “Art is a microscope which the artist fixes on the secrets of his soul, and shows to people these secrets which are common to all.”

— Leo Tolstoy

110. “Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”

— Leo Tolstoy

111. “The highest wisdom has but one science – the science of the whole – the science explaining the whole creation and man’s place in it.”

— Leo Tolstoy

112. “The kinder and more intelligent a person is, the more kindness he can find in other people. Kindness enriches our life; with kindness mysterious things become clear, difficult things become easy and dull things become cheerful.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

114. “To sin is a human business, to justify sins is a devilish business.”

— Leo Tolstoy

115. “If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”

— Leo Tolstoy

116. “The most important person is the one you are with in this moment.”

— Leo Tolstoy

117. “All art has this characteristic-it unites people.”

— Leo Tolstoy

118. “Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal – that there is no human relation between master and slave.”

— Leo Tolstoy

119. “The more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life.”

— Leo Tolstoy

120. “Music is love in search of a voice.”

— Leo Tolstoy

121. “It is not beauty that endears, it’s love that makes us see beauty.”

— Leo Tolstoy

122. “All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.”

— Leo Tolstoy

123. “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. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking...”

— Leo Tolstoy

124. “Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective, of nature with reason, of the unconscious with the conscious, and therefore art is the highest means of knowledge.”

— Leo Tolstoy

125. “Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there in life any purpose which the inevitable death that awaits me does not undo and destroy?”

— Leo Tolstoy

126. “If you do not know your place in the world and the meaning of your life, you should know there is something to blame; and it is not the social system, or your intellect, but the way in which you have directed your intellect.”

— Leo Tolstoy

127. “Once we’re thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost, but it’s only here that the new and the good begins.”

— Leo Tolstoy

128. “Anything is better than lies and deceit!”

— Leo Tolstoy

129. “Happiness is pleasure without regret.”

— Leo Tolstoy

130. “There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.”

— Leo Tolstoy

131. “Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.”

— Leo Tolstoy

132. “Very often, all the activity of the human mind is directed not in revealing the truth, but in hiding the truth.”

— Leo Tolstoy

133. “Until you do what you believe in, you don’t know whether you believe it or not.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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

— Leo Tolstoy

135. “What is important is not the quantity of your knowledge but its quality. You can know many things without knowing the most important.”

— Leo Tolstoy

136. “It’s all God’s will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.”

— Leo Tolstoy

137. “Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.”

— Leo Tolstoy

138. “For a few seconds they looked silently into each other’s eyes, and the distant and impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable.”

— Leo Tolstoy

139. “Perhaps it’s because I appreciate all I have so much that I don’t worry about what I haven’t got.”

— Leo Tolstoy

140. “Regard the society of women as a necessary unpleasantness of social life, and avoid it as much as possible.”

— Leo Tolstoy

141. “He in his madness prays for storms, and dreams that storms will bring him peace.”

— Leo Tolstoy

142. “The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness...”

— Leo Tolstoy

143. “And where love ends, hate begins.”

— Leo Tolstoy

144. “Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it.”

— Leo Tolstoy

145. “Everything depends on upbringing.”

— Leo Tolstoy

146. “Men need only trust in Christ’s teaching and obey it, and there will be peace on earth.”

— Leo Tolstoy

147. “One must put oneself in every one’s position. To understand everything is to forgive everything.”

— Leo Tolstoy

148. “Be bad, but at least don’t be a liar, a deceiver!”

— Leo Tolstoy

149. “We lost because we told ourselves we lost.”

— Leo Tolstoy

150. “Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.”

— Leo Tolstoy