Quotes from Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

You see, if you take pains and learn in order to get a reward, the work will seem hard; but when you work... if you love your work, you will find your reward in that.

Some mathematician has said pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in seeking it.

The religious superstition is encouraged by means of the institution of churches, processions, monuments, festivities....The so-called clergy stupefy the masses....They befog the people and keep them in an eternal condition of stupefaction

Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live.

True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception.

Let us forgive each other - only then will we live in peace

The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgment and profession of the truth by each one of us.

If a man earnestly seeks a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from animal food.

The happiness of men consists in life. And life is in labor.

Joy can be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness

A human can 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.

Woman, you see, is an object of such a kind that study it as much as you will, it is always quite new.

He had heard that women often love plain ordinary men, but he did not believe it, because he judged by himself and he could only love beautiful mysterious exceptional women.

And all people live, not by reason of any care they have for themselves, but by the love for them that is in other people.

Children love and want to be loved and they very much prefer the joy of accomplishment to the triumph of hateful failure. Do not mistake a child for his symptom.

In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning and cruelty

The means to gain happiness is to throw out from oneself like a spider in all directions an adhesive web of love, and to catch in it all that comes

If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.

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.

What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.