1,507 Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.

Next week, and a splendid ball. One of those balls where one always enjoys oneself.Why, are there balls where one always enjoys oneself? Anna said, with tender irony.

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

what time can be more beautiful than the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute the sole motives of your life?

Sitting in his old schoolroom on the sofa with little cushions on the arms and looking into Natasha's wildly eager eyes, Rostov was carried back into that world of home and childhood which had no meaning for anyone else, but gave him some of the greatest pleasure in his life.

All the enthusiasms of childhood and youth passed without leaving much mark on him; he succumbed to sensuality, and to vanity, and, towards the end of his schooldays, to the idea of liberalism, but always within limits which his instinct unfailingly indicated to him.

Constantine Levin did not like talking or hearing about the beauty of nature. Words seemed to detract from the beauty of what he was looking at.

All this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew which has grown up on a tiny planet.

How strange it is that when I was a child I tried to be like a grownup, yet as soon as I ceased to be a child I often longed to be like one.