30 quotes by Leo Tolstoy for those who love Russian literature

The joy of doing good is the only true happiness.

Wrong is still wrong because the majority share.

It is the immutable fate of all active actors that the more highly placed they are in the human hierarchy, the less free they will be.

Love begins when a person feels alone and ends when a person wants to be alone.

If you want to be universal, start by painting your village.

The stars, as if they knew that no one was watching them now, began to play in the black sky. Now they flared, now they went out, now they flickered, as they whispered boldly to one another something happy but mysterious.

The secret of happiness is not always doing what you want, but always wanting what you do.

What was and what will be, and even what is, we are not capable of knowing, but as to what we ought to do, we are not only capable of knowing, but we always know it, and that alone is necessary for us.

I must get used to the fact that no one will ever understand me. This must be the common fate of difficult people.

The rich will do anything for the poor, except get off their backs.

Man has no power over anything as long as he is afraid of death. And whoever is not afraid of death possesses everything.

Man loves, because love is the essence of his soul. That’s why he can’t help but love.

Everyone thinks about changing the world, but nobody thinks about changing himself.

When you love someone, you love them as they are, not as you would like them to be.

It is in the heart of man that the beginning and the end of all things reside.

Any reform imposed by violence will in no way correct the evil: the good does not need violence.

Whatever our fate may be or may be, we do it, and we do not regret it.

There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.

Reason taught me nothing. Everything I know has been given to me by the heart.

Marriage is a boat that takes two people across a stormy sea; if one of the two makes any sudden movement, the boat sinks.

My religion is love for all living beings.

True happiness is in the house itself, among the joys of the family.

It is in my power to serve God or not to serve him. By serving him, I add to my own good and the good of the whole universe. By not serving him, I give up my own good and deprive the world of the good that it was in my power to create.

Art is not a manual work, it is the transmission of feeling that the artist has experienced.

Money represents a new form of impersonal slavery in place of the old personal slavery.

Each lived as long as he loved.

It is not possible to be half good.

He felt that love was saving him from despair, and that love, under the threat of despair, became even stronger and purer.

A man can live a healthy life without having to kill animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in the act of taking the life of a creature merely to satisfy its appetite. And to act this way is immoral.

The only consolation I feel when thinking about the inevitability of my death is the same as when the boat is in danger: we are all in the same situation.