Leo Tolstoy

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

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

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

“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between man and nature shall not be broken.”

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

“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people, has more happiness in it than a life of mere ambition.”

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

“If you want to be happy, be.”

“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.”

“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”

“True life is lived when tiny changes occur.”

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

“Boredom: the desire for desires.”

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

“Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation.”

“The only thing that we know is that we know nothing — and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.”

“Rightly or wrongly, a person is satisfied with the present moment.”

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

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

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

“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.”

“Music is the shorthand of emotion.”

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

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

“The stronger the love, the more it forgives.”

“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.”

“The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people.”

“The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God.”

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

“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already.”

“All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.”

“The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism.”

“I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.”

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

“Spring is the time of plans and projects.”

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

“The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience.”

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