Leo Tolstoy

Music is the shorthand of emotion

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.

In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning.

To get rid of an enemy one must love him.

Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it.

Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?

Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

Choose happiness, not success, as your life’s goal. If you become successful but aren’t happy, then what is the point?

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

Happiness ain’t a thing in itself -it’s only a contrast with something that ain’t pleasant. And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain’t happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.

Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I’m alive, I must live and be happy.

Happiness is the absence of striving for happiness.

The intense happiness of our union is derived in a high degree from the perfect freedom with which we each follow and declare our own impressions.

Action may not bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.

Be happy; without reason.

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved – loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.

It’s time for you to claim the happiness that you deserve in your life.

It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.

Happiness, wealth, and success are the byproducts of goal setting; they cannot be the goals themselves.