14 quotes
Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.
War and Peace (1865)
I have learnt that all men live not by care for themselves, but by love.
What Men Live By (1881)
"Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be."
Anna Karenina (1875)
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
The Kreutzer Sonata (1889)
To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved sufferings.
War and Peace (1865)
I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.
What Men Live By (1881)
Spiritual beauty or the good, generally not only does not coincide with the typical meaning of beauty, it is its opposite.
What is Art? (1897)
The commandments of God should be followed because of love of God, not because of fear of God.
When we do not love, we sleep, we are children of the dust — but love, and you are a god, you are pure, as on the first day of creation.
If you love a person without loving God, which is the goodness inside of him, then you plant the seeds for future disappointments and sufferings with this love.
When the woman showed her love for the children that were not her own, and wept over them, I saw in her the living God, and understood What men live by.
What Men Live By (1881)
Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.
As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence — as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual.
A Letter to a Hindu (1908)
The more God's manifestation in man (life) unites with the manifestations (lives) of other beings, the more man exists. This union with the lives of other beings is accomplished through love.
God is not love, but the more there is of love, the more man manifests God, and the more he truly exists...