Leo Tolstoy

If you want to be happy, be.

All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Boredom: the desire for desires.

Everything depends on upbringing.

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food, therefore if he eats meat he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.

The greater the state the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.

War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.

I sit on a man's back choking him and making him carry me and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.

The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation but deeds can be done only for God.

All violence consists in some people forcing others under threat of suffering or death to do what they do not want to do.

One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.

And all people live Not by reason of any care they have for themselves But by the love for them that is in other people.

There is no greatness where there is no simplicity goodness and truth.

We lost because we told ourselves we lost.

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Without knowing what I am and why I am here life is impossible.

Man lives consciously for himself but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic universal aims of humanity.

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.

If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one's reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state.