Leo Tolstoy

Be bad, but at least don’t be a liar, a deceiver!

And you know, there’s less charm in life when you think about death–but it’s more peaceful.

We walked to meet each other up at the time of our love and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions, and there’s no altering that.

Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid.

Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?

How can one be well…when one suffers morally?

Each thought is a nail that is driven In structures that cannot decay; And the mansion at last will be given To us as we build it each day.

Any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.

By common consent of all the nations and all the ages the most valuable thing in this world is the homage of men, whether deserved or undeserved.

It is of no consequence of what parents a man is born, as long as he be a man of merit.

Every person is a God in embryo. Its only desire is to be born.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players.

Principles aren’t of much account anyway, except at election time. After that you hang them up to let them season.

The mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension. He does not make a speech; he takes a low business-tone, avoids all brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, promises not at all, performs much, speaks in monosyllables, hugs his fact. He calls his employment by its lowest name, and so takes from evil tongues their sharpest weapon. His conversation clings to the weather and the news, yet he allows himself to be surprised into thought, and the unlocking of his learning and philosophy.

There mark what ills the scholar’s life assail, toil, envy, want, and patron.

We know there is intention and purpose in the universe, because there is intention and purpose in us.

Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone… I never yet met with, or heard of, a judge who was not a slave of this kind, and so the finest and most unfailing weapon of injustice. He fetches a slightly higher price than the black men only because he is a more valuable slave.

Life is measured by the rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being.