Leo Tolstoy

Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love . . .

The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.

In our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.

The truth is always accessible to a man. It can't be otherwise, because a man's soul is a divine spark, the truth itself.

Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.

History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put into words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a single nation, appears impossible.

Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.

Humanity unceasingly strives forward from a lower, more partial and obscure understanding of life to one more general and more lucid.