75+ (BEST) Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

Quotes by Leo Tolstoy are a perfect way to start your day. Leaving us beautiful words in every way possible with the wisdom of the most beloved and respected Russian novelist.

Leo Tolstoy was a Russian novelist, writer, essayist, philosopher, Christian anarchist, pacifist, educational reformer, moral thinker, and an influential member of the literary group known as the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Here are a lot of quotes about life, friendship, love. They will help you wise up and make your life brighter.

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Contents

Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

This quote collection brings together the wisest, most thought-provoking, and enduring pieces of short prose by Russia’s favorite author.

These quotes touch on various themes ranging from wisdom and happiness to jealousy and censorship. Add some of his inspirational ideas to your own life today.

  • “To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “Music is the shorthand of emotion” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.” –Leo Tolstoy
Quotes by Leo Tolstoy
Quotes by 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
  • “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction. ” –Leo Tolstoy

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

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  • “To get rid of an enemy one must love him.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “As long as there are slaughter houses there will always be battlefields.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?” –Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Quotes on Love

These quotes will inspire in you the same love Leo Tolstoy had for nature and humanity.

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  • “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
  • “It’s hard to love a woman and do anything.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “If you love me as you say you do,’ she whispered, ‘make it so that I am at peace. ” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “Love those who hate you.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “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 ” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.” –Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy Quotes on Love
Leo Tolstoy Quotes on Love
  • “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
  • “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
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  • “In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning.” –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

“Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand.” –Leo Tolstoy

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  • “He looked at her as a man might look at a faded flower he had plucked, in which it was difficult for him to trace the beauty that had made him pick and so destroy it” –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
  • “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


  • “If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source. ” –Leo Tolstoy
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  • “All the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class included all the girls in the world except her, and they had all the usual human feelings and were very ordinary girls; while the other class -herself alone- had no weaknesses and was superior to all humanity.” –Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Quotes on Life Lessons

This collection of quotes will inspire your journey through life whether you’re looking to live long or short.

  • “Which is worse? The wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not. ”  –Leo Tolstoy
  • “Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “The best stories don’t come from good vs. bad but good vs. good.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom. ” –Leo Tolstoy
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  • “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?” –Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy Quotes
Leo Tolstoy Quotes
  • “I sit on a man’s back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible..except by getting off his back. ” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “But I’m glad you’ll see me as I am. Above all, I wouldn’t want people to think that I want to prove anything. I don’t want to prove anything, I just want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself. I have that right, haven’t I? ” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “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. ” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.” –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
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  • “All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “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. ” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “Here’s my advice to you: don’t marry until you can tell yourself that you’ve done all you could, and until you’ve stopped loving the women you’ve chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you’ll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you’re old and good for nothing…Otherwise all that’s good and lofty in you will be lost.” –Leo Tolstoy

Famous Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

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Here are some most famous quotes by Leo Tolstoy, will help you to make more wise and influencible.

  • “Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of people–that’s in your hands.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness.” –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
  • “Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “The business of art lies just in this, — to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “Be bad, but at least don’t be a liar, a deceiver!” –Leo Tolstoy
Quotes by Leo Tolstoy
Quotes by Leo Tolstoy
  • “It’s much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.” –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
  • “For if we allow that human life is always guided by reason, we destroy the premise that life is possible at all.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “As long as there are slaughter houses there will always be battlefields.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “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. ” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “I’m like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he’s cold, and his clothes are torn, and he’s ashamed, but he’s not unhappy. ” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. This fulfillment showed him the eternal error men make in imagining that their happiness depends on the realization of their desires. ” –Leo Tolstoy


  • “If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.” –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
  • “All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “I sit on a man’s back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that i am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible..except by getting off his back. ” –Leo Tolstoy
  • “Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself. ” –Leo Tolstoy

Final Words

A collection of inspirational Leo Tolstoy quotes on life lessons and wisdom that will change your perspective on what it means to be human. Included are some of the deepest and meaningful animated images based on his words.

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