Leo Tolstoy

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

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

“If you want to be happy, be.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“Boredom: the desire for desires.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“True life is lived when tiny changes occur.”

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

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

“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.”

“Spring is the time of plans and projects.”

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

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

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

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

“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 stronger the love, the more it forgives.”

“Music is the shorthand of emotion.”

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