“Pay bad people with your goodness.
Fight their hatred with your kindness.
Even if you do not achieve victory over other people, you will conquer yourself.”– Leo Tolstoy.
We talk a lot about war, peace, and then war and peace together and how they might be connected in some way. The person who gave us insight about the connection of two poles– apart words is Leo Tolstoy. His variation of work and knowledge of literature can be predicted from two of his most famous and praised works, that is War and Peace and Anna Karenina. While one talks about society and the various people, the other talks about the complexity in the mind of an individual. So to look upon his work from a little closer, we have brought some of the most popular and famous Leo Tolstoy Quotes and Sayings.
He was born on the 9th of September 1828 in an aristocratic Russian family. He was so successful in his work and so widely praised that he was nominated for Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906 and was nominated for Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902, and 1909. But he never won (hmm..fishy).
His writing style was mostly fiction but his writings were more close to the reality than anything else. He talked about the complexities in society and in people.
So here are some of the best Leo Tolstoy Quotes and Sayings about love, life, war and peace for you:
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Leo Tolstoy Quotes
- “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “We lost because we told ourselves we lost.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “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.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “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
- “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
- “We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “If you want to be happy, be.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Spring is the time of plans and projects.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?” – Leo Tolstoy
- “In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Be bad, but at least don’t be a liar, a deceiver!” – Leo Tolstoy
- “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Anything is better than lies and deceit!” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “I’ve always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “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. And to act so is immoral.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Boredom: the desire for desires.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “It’s much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “The best stories don’t come from “good vs. bad” but “good vs. good.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “They’ve got no idea what happiness is, they don’t know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us – there is no life.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “If you love me as you say you do,’ she whispered, ‘make it so that I am at peace.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “True life is lived when tiny changes occur.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “It’s hard to love a woman and do anything.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I’m alive, I must live and be happy.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “I often think that men don’t understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you deal with incompatibility.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Love those you hate you.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Seize the moments of happiness, love, and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “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.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “To get rid of an enemy one must love him.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget…” – Leo Tolstoy
- “We are asleep until we fall in Love!” – Leo Tolstoy
- “I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “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
- “She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Everything I know, I know because of love.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Because of the self– confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Music is the shorthand of emotion.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Everything intelligent is so boring.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won’t come out for twenty years if you really wish to learn.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Every heart has its own skeletons.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “It’s all God’s will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “He went down trying not to look long at her, as though she were the sun, but he saw her, as one sees the sun, without looking.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “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
- “Everything depends on upbringing.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “He stepped down, avoiding any long look at her as one avoids long looks at the sun, but seeing her as one sees the sun, without looking.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “We walked to meet each other up at the time of our love and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions, and there’s no altering that.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “God is the same everywhere.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Life did not stop, and one had to live.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.” – Leo Tolstoy
He was excellent in what he did and his popularity in literature even after a century later is the proof of that. Enjoy his words and have a great day ahead.
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