Leo Tolstoy

The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.

Everything I know, I know because of love.

Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.

Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget…

He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.

Boredom: the desire for desires.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

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

We must train hard. It’s not about denying a weakness may exist but about denying its right to persist.

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm.

This body of mine is my teacher. This heart of mine, my guide. My dear head struggles to make sense of it all whilst my hands gently remind me to trust and let go.

Thinking will not overcome fear but action will.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

Something made greater by ourselves and in turn that makes us greater.

Even the youngest of us may be wrong sometimes.

How can what an Englishman believes be hearsay? It is a contradiction in terms.

A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.