1,507 Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

Love does not exist. There exists the physical need for intercourse, and the rational need for a mate in life.

There was no answer, except the general answer life gives to all the most complex and insoluble questions. That answer is: one must live for the needs of the day, in other words, become oblivious.

While I doubted, I had hope; but now there is no hope left and all the same I doubt everything.

That debauchery was not a good thing in a married man did not even occur to him [Tsar Nicholas I], and he would have been very surprised if anyone had condemned him for it. But, even though he was convinced that he had acted as he ought, he was left with some sort of unpleasant aftertaste, and, to stifle that feeling, he began thinking about something that always soothed him: about what a great man he was.

When the suffering of another creature causes you to feel pain, do not submit to the initial desire to flee from the suffering one, but on the contrary, come closer, as close as you can to him who suffers, and try to help him.

Instead of the former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or Roman nations, which ancient historians regarded as representing the progress of humanity, modern history has postulated its own aims- the welfare of the French, German, or English people, or, in its highest abstraction, the welfare and civilization of humanity in general, by which is usually meant that of the peoples occupying a small northwesterly portion of a large continent.

Sí, todo era equivocado, pensó, pero no importa. Se puede, es posible hacer lo otro. Pero se preguntó, ¿qué es lo otro?, y de repente se quedó sosegado.

Se detuvo y contempló las copas de los álamos, mecidas por el viento,con sus hojas mojadas y relucientes bajo el sol frío, y comprendió que no la perdonarían, que todo el mundo sería inmisericorde con ella,como ese cielo y ese follaje.

Pero él no lo creía, porque juzgaba a los demás por sí mismo.