If you’re looking for an author whose bibliography includes something you can easily read while lying by the pool, Leo Tolstoy might not be for you. His works are layered, philosophical, and lengthy – War and Peace (1869) consists of over half a million words.

Born Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, the author was one of Russia’s finest literary talents, making an impact overseas that few of his peers could match. A Crimean War veteran and consummate pacifist, his life was a long and full one before his death at the age of 82 in 1910.

With the likes of War and Peace , Anna Karenina , and his autobiographical trilogy Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (1852–1856) forming his bibliography, it’s hard to think of many more writers than have had such an impact on the literary world. On what would have been his 187th birthday, we take a look at the talents of Leo Tolstoy with some of his greatest quotes.

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

“If you want to be happy, be.”

“All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.”

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.

“Boredom: the desire for desires.”

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”

“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

“Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.”

“The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.”

Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.

“Music is the shorthand of emotion.”