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Leo Tolstoy Quotes

Writer

Leo Tolstoy is celebrated as one of literature’s greatest minds, whose works explore the depths of human experience, morality, and society. His writing combines profound philosophical insight with keen observations of everyday life, revealing timeless truths about love, faith, and the human condition. The following quotes capture his wisdom, introspection, and the enduring relevance of his literary legacy.

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I had begun to feel that life was a repetition of the same thing; that there was nothing new either in me or in him; and that, on the contrary, we kept going back as it were on what was old.
From Семейное счастие
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Without the support from religion--remember, we talked about it--no father, using only his own resources, would be able to bring up a child.
From Anna Karenina
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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.
From Anna Karenina
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I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books , music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?
From Семейное счастие
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Then he thought himself unhappy, but happiness was all in the future; now he felt that the best happiness was already in the past.
From Anna Karenina
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He had learned that, as there is no situation in the world in which a man can be happy and perfectly free, so there is no situation in which he can be perfectly unhappy and unfree.
From War and Peace
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Vronsky saw nothing and no one. He felt himself as a king, not because she had made an impression on Anna-he did not yet believe that-but because the impression she had made on him gave him happiness and pride.
From Anna Karenina
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It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.
From War and Peace
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A little muzhik was working on the railroad, mumbling in his beard.
And the candle by which she had read the book that was filled with fears, with deceptions, with anguish, and with evil, flared up with greater brightness than she had ever known, revealing to her all that before was in darkness, then flickered, grew faint, and went out
forever.
From Anna Karenina
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You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.
From War and Peace
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Without knowledge of what I am and why I am here, it is impossible to live, and since I cannot know that, I cannot live either. In an infinity of time, in an infinity of matter, and an infinity of space a bubble-organism emerges while will exist for a little time and then burst, and that bubble am I.
From Anna Karenina
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Toate familiile fericite se aseamănă între ele. Fiecare familie nefericită este nefericită în felul ei.
From Anna Karenina
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Between Countess Nordston and Levin there had been established those relations, not infrequent in society, in which two persons, while ostensibly remaining on friendly terms, are contemptuous of each other to such a degree that they cannot even treat each other seriously and cannot even insult each one another.
From Anna Karenina
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All religious-moral questions are decided not by consideration of what is more advantageous, but by that which a man recognizes good and what is evil, what is a duty and what is not.
From The Inevitable Revolution
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One must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible. I'm alive and it's not my fault, which means I must somehow go on living the best I can, without bothering anybody, until I die.'
'But what makes you live? With such thoughts, you'll sit without moving, without undertaking anything...'
'Life won't leave one alone as it is.
From War and Peace
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And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.
From Anna Karenina
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If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You are all misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived. The sun does not go round the
earth, but the earth goes round the sun, revolving as it
goes, and turning towards the sun in the course of each
twenty-four hours, not only Japan, and the Philippines,
and Sumatra where we now are, but Africa, and Europe,
and America, and many lands besides. The sun does not
shine for some one mountain, or for some one island,
or for some one sea, nor even for one earth alone, but
for other planets as well as our earth. If you would
only look up at the heavens, instead of at the ground
beneath your own feet, you might all understand this,
and would then no longer suppose that the sun shines
for you, or for your country alone.
From Eleven Stories
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Here I am...wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end--that there is such a thing as death.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It can't be that life is so senseless and horrible. But if it really has been so horrible and senseless, why must I die and die in agony? There is something wrong!
From The Death of Ivan Ilych
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In actuality, it was like the homes of all people who are not really rich but who want to look rich, and therefore end up looking like one another: it had damasks, ebony, plants, carpets, and bronzes, everything dark and gleaming—all the effects a certain class of people produce so as to look like people of a certain class. And his place looked so much like the others that it would never have been noticed, though it all seemed quite exceptional to him.
From The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories
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The more mental effort he made the clearer he saw that it was undoubtedly so: that he had really forgotten and overlooked one little circumstance in life - that Death would come and end everything, so that it was useless to begin anything, and that there was no help for it, Yes it was terrible but true
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Love those you hate you.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I had begun to feel that life was a repetition of the same thing; that there was nothing new either in me or in him; and that, on the contrary, we kept going back as it were on what was old.
From Семейное счастие
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Without the support from religion--remember, we talked about it--no father, using only his own resources, would be able to bring up a child.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books , music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?
From Семейное счастие
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Then he thought himself unhappy, but happiness was all in the future; now he felt that the best happiness was already in the past.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He had learned that, as there is no situation in the world in which a man can be happy and perfectly free, so there is no situation in which he can be perfectly unhappy and unfree.
From War and Peace
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Vronsky saw nothing and no one. He felt himself as a king, not because she had made an impression on Anna-he did not yet believe that-but because the impression she had made on him gave him happiness and pride.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.
From War and Peace
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
A little muzhik was working on the railroad, mumbling in his beard.
And the candle by which she had read the book that was filled with fears, with deceptions, with anguish, and with evil, flared up with greater brightness than she had ever known, revealing to her all that before was in darkness, then flickered, grew faint, and went out
forever.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.
From War and Peace
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Without knowledge of what I am and why I am here, it is impossible to live, and since I cannot know that, I cannot live either. In an infinity of time, in an infinity of matter, and an infinity of space a bubble-organism emerges while will exist for a little time and then burst, and that bubble am I.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Toate familiile fericite se aseamănă între ele. Fiecare familie nefericită este nefericită în felul ei.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Between Countess Nordston and Levin there had been established those relations, not infrequent in society, in which two persons, while ostensibly remaining on friendly terms, are contemptuous of each other to such a degree that they cannot even treat each other seriously and cannot even insult each one another.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
All religious-moral questions are decided not by consideration of what is more advantageous, but by that which a man recognizes good and what is evil, what is a duty and what is not.
From The Inevitable Revolution
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
One must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible. I'm alive and it's not my fault, which means I must somehow go on living the best I can, without bothering anybody, until I die.'
'But what makes you live? With such thoughts, you'll sit without moving, without undertaking anything...'
'Life won't leave one alone as it is.
From War and Peace
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You are all misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived. The sun does not go round the
earth, but the earth goes round the sun, revolving as it
goes, and turning towards the sun in the course of each
twenty-four hours, not only Japan, and the Philippines,
and Sumatra where we now are, but Africa, and Europe,
and America, and many lands besides. The sun does not
shine for some one mountain, or for some one island,
or for some one sea, nor even for one earth alone, but
for other planets as well as our earth. If you would
only look up at the heavens, instead of at the ground
beneath your own feet, you might all understand this,
and would then no longer suppose that the sun shines
for you, or for your country alone.
From Eleven Stories
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Here I am...wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end--that there is such a thing as death.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It can't be that life is so senseless and horrible. But if it really has been so horrible and senseless, why must I die and die in agony? There is something wrong!
From The Death of Ivan Ilych
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
In actuality, it was like the homes of all people who are not really rich but who want to look rich, and therefore end up looking like one another: it had damasks, ebony, plants, carpets, and bronzes, everything dark and gleaming—all the effects a certain class of people produce so as to look like people of a certain class. And his place looked so much like the others that it would never have been noticed, though it all seemed quite exceptional to him.
From The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The more mental effort he made the clearer he saw that it was undoubtedly so: that he had really forgotten and overlooked one little circumstance in life - that Death would come and end everything, so that it was useless to begin anything, and that there was no help for it, Yes it was terrible but true
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Love those you hate you.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I had begun to feel that life was a repetition of the same thing; that there was nothing new either in me or in him; and that, on the contrary, we kept going back as it were on what was old.
From Семейное счастие
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Without the support from religion--remember, we talked about it--no father, using only his own resources, would be able to bring up a child.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books , music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?
From Семейное счастие
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Then he thought himself unhappy, but happiness was all in the future; now he felt that the best happiness was already in the past.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He had learned that, as there is no situation in the world in which a man can be happy and perfectly free, so there is no situation in which he can be perfectly unhappy and unfree.
From War and Peace
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Vronsky saw nothing and no one. He felt himself as a king, not because she had made an impression on Anna-he did not yet believe that-but because the impression she had made on him gave him happiness and pride.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.
From War and Peace
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
A little muzhik was working on the railroad, mumbling in his beard.
And the candle by which she had read the book that was filled with fears, with deceptions, with anguish, and with evil, flared up with greater brightness than she had ever known, revealing to her all that before was in darkness, then flickered, grew faint, and went out
forever.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.
From War and Peace
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Without knowledge of what I am and why I am here, it is impossible to live, and since I cannot know that, I cannot live either. In an infinity of time, in an infinity of matter, and an infinity of space a bubble-organism emerges while will exist for a little time and then burst, and that bubble am I.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Toate familiile fericite se aseamănă între ele. Fiecare familie nefericită este nefericită în felul ei.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Between Countess Nordston and Levin there had been established those relations, not infrequent in society, in which two persons, while ostensibly remaining on friendly terms, are contemptuous of each other to such a degree that they cannot even treat each other seriously and cannot even insult each one another.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
All religious-moral questions are decided not by consideration of what is more advantageous, but by that which a man recognizes good and what is evil, what is a duty and what is not.
From The Inevitable Revolution
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
One must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible. I'm alive and it's not my fault, which means I must somehow go on living the best I can, without bothering anybody, until I die.'
'But what makes you live? With such thoughts, you'll sit without moving, without undertaking anything...'
'Life won't leave one alone as it is.
From War and Peace
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You are all misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived. The sun does not go round the
earth, but the earth goes round the sun, revolving as it
goes, and turning towards the sun in the course of each
twenty-four hours, not only Japan, and the Philippines,
and Sumatra where we now are, but Africa, and Europe,
and America, and many lands besides. The sun does not
shine for some one mountain, or for some one island,
or for some one sea, nor even for one earth alone, but
for other planets as well as our earth. If you would
only look up at the heavens, instead of at the ground
beneath your own feet, you might all understand this,
and would then no longer suppose that the sun shines
for you, or for your country alone.
From Eleven Stories
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Here I am...wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end--that there is such a thing as death.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It can't be that life is so senseless and horrible. But if it really has been so horrible and senseless, why must I die and die in agony? There is something wrong!
From The Death of Ivan Ilych
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
In actuality, it was like the homes of all people who are not really rich but who want to look rich, and therefore end up looking like one another: it had damasks, ebony, plants, carpets, and bronzes, everything dark and gleaming—all the effects a certain class of people produce so as to look like people of a certain class. And his place looked so much like the others that it would never have been noticed, though it all seemed quite exceptional to him.
From The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The more mental effort he made the clearer he saw that it was undoubtedly so: that he had really forgotten and overlooked one little circumstance in life - that Death would come and end everything, so that it was useless to begin anything, and that there was no help for it, Yes it was terrible but true
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Love those you hate you.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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.
From Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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