Art begins when a man, with a purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs.
Leo TolstoyRead
If you want to be happy, try only to please God, not people.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True happiness comes from fulfilling spiritual and personal values rather than seeking approval from others.
This quote emphasizes the idea that genuine happiness is derived from aligning one's actions with higher principles, such as pleasing God or fulfilling one's purpose, rather than seeking validation or approval from other people. It suggests that when individuals focus on their spiritual or intrinsic values, they can find deeper, more lasting happiness instead of the fleeting satisfaction that often comes from external validation.
Themes
HappinessGodApprovalPeopleValues
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about finding true happiness, you could quote Tolstoy to emphasize the importance of personal integrity over societal expectations.
More from Leo Tolstoy
All quotes βPierre looked into the sky, into the depths of the retreating, twinkling stars. "And all this is mine, and all this is in me, and all this is me!" thought Pierre. "And all this they've caught and put in a shed and boarded it up!
Leo TolstoyRead
People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing-refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.
Leo TolstoyRead
It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else's mistakes.
Leo TolstoyRead
Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man in music, and in that is its power and significance.
Leo TolstoyRead
A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor β such is my idea of happiness.
Leo TolstoyRead
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Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.
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Turn your attention for a while away from the worries and anxieties. Remind yourself of all your many blessings.
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Each in the most hidden sack kept the lost jewels of memory, intense love, secret nights and permanent kisses, the fragment of public or private happiness. A few, the wolves, collected thighs, other men loved the dawn scratching mountain ranges or ice floes, locomotives, numbers. For me happiness was to share singing, praising, cursing, crying with a thousand eyes. I ask forgiveness for my bad ways: my life had no use on earth.
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