He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.
In order to obtain and hold power, a man must love it.
Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe. Only the truth gives me consolation – it is the one unbreakable diamond.
Vegetarianism serves as the criterion by which we know that the pursuit of moral perfection on the part of humanity is genuine and sincere.
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.
To abolish war it is necessary to abolish patriotism, and to abolish patriotism it is necessary first to understand that it is an evil. Tell people that patriotism is bad and most will reply, ‘Yes, bad patriotism is bad, but mine is good patriotism.’
We lost because we told ourselves we lost.
Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.
Governments not only are not necessary, but are harmful and most highly immoral institutions.
One may say with one’s lips: ‘I believe that God is one, and also three’ – but no one can believe it, because the words have no sense.
It may be suggested by some books that it is not a sin to kill an animal, but it is written in our own hearts – more clearly than in any book – that we should take pity on animals in the same way as we do on humans.
The most important knowledge is that which guides the way you lead your life.
Just as one candle lights another and can light thousands of other candles, so one heart illuminates another heart and can illuminate thousands of other hearts.
Smiling with pleasure, they went through their memories, not sad, old people’s memories, but poetic, youthful ones, those impressions from the very distant past where dream merges with reality, and they laughed softly, rejoicing at something.
Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: ’what shall we do and how shall we live.
Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
When the suffering of another creature causes you to feel pain, do not submit to the initial desire to flee from the suffering one, but on the contrary, come closer, as close as you can to her who suffers, and try to help her.
Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.
I have found that a story leaves a deeper impression when it is impossible to tell which side the author is on.
Am I mad, to see what others do not see, or are they mad who are responsible for all that I am seeing?