Leo Tolstoy

When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.

Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.

If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.

Anything is better than lies and deceit!

To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.

Everything intelligent is so boring.

How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances? No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he’s chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it at best with a resignation which is chiefly supported by comparison.

You don’t learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking and getting well hammered yourself.

It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself.

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.

People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together.

Branching streams cannot compare to the source.

I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.

The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves.

If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively.

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lift human life above the level of farce and give it some of the grace of tragedy.

Patron: One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery.

That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquility.

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.