Quotes from Leo Tolstoy

The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good.

Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself.

Progress consists only in the greater clarification of answers to the basic questions of life.

He never chooses an opinion; he just wears whatever happens to be in style.

We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is happiness. There is much, much before us.

Life is fragile and absurd.

Life consists in penetrating the unknown, and fashioning our actions in accord with the new knowledge thus acquired.

What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty.

My life had come to a sudden stop. I was able to breathe, to eat, to drink, to sleep. I could not, indeed help doing so; but there was no real life in me.

It is possible to live only as long as life intoxicates us; once we are sober we cannot help seeing that it is all a delusion, a stupid delusion.

Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there in life any purpose which the inevitable death that awaits me does not undo and destroy?

There are no conditions to which a man cannot get accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.

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.

The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.

God gave the day, God gave the strength.

The key to success in life is using the good thoughts of wise people.

Before we can study the central issues of life today, we must destroy the prejudices and fallacies born of previous centuries.

Suddenly I heard the words of Christ and understood them, and life and death ceased to seem to me evil, and instead of despair I experienced happiness and the joy of life undisturbed by death.

Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.

We should show life neither as it is or as it ought to be, but only as we see it in our dreams.

The purpose of life is to bring forth goodness. Now, in this life.

If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of life is destroyed.

This is where the strength of the physician lies, be he a quack, a homeopath or an allopath. He supplies the perennial demand for comfort, the craving for sympathy that every human sufferer feels.

The best method for a given teacher is the one which is most familiar to the teacher.