Quotes from Leo 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.

I believe that the reason of life is for each of us simply to grow in love.

Love is the only way to rescue humanity from all ills.

I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.

Where there is love, there is God also.

If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one's reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state.

Men need only trust in Christ's teaching and obey it, and there will be peace on earth.

Boredom: the desire for desires.

Very often, all the activity of the human mind is directed not in revealing the truth, but in hiding the truth

The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.

Debates conceal rather than reveal the truth. Truth is revealed in solitude.

Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe. Only the truth gives me consolation - it is the one unbreakable diamond.

To say that you can love one person all your life is just like saying that one candle will continue burning as long as you live.

It's like scarlet fever: one has to get it over." "Then one should invent a way of inoculating love, like vaccination.

Music is love in search of a voice.

The meaning of life consists in the love and service of God.

Christian love comes from the understanding that there is a unity of divine origins in oneself and in other people, and not only in people, but in all living things.

I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be. -Dolly

Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallpox.

He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.

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

When I have one foot in the grave, I will tell the whole truth about women. I shall tell it, jump into my coffin, pull the lid over me and say, "Do what you like now."

To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.

The goal of our life should not be to find joy in marriage, but to bring more love and truth into the world.