Not Leo Tolstoy — actually Kozma PrutkovKozma PrutkovFictional aphorist invented in the 1850s · pen name of Count Aleksey K. Tolstoy (1817–1875) and the three Zhemchuzhnikov brothers
The line is aphorism No. 80 of Плоды раздумья: Мысли и афоризмы (Fruits of Reflection: Thoughts and Aphorisms), published under the pen name Kozma Prutkov — a pompous fictional official invented in the 1850s by Count Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy and his three Zhemchuzhnikov cousins. The Russian reads «Если хочешь быть счастливым, будь им». Wikiquote ↗ files the English line under Disputed for Leo Tolstoy and notes there is no known citation to original material by him. So a Count Tolstoy did write it — just not that one.
“If you want to be happy, be” Kozma Prutkov (pen name of Count Aleksey K. Tolstoy and the three Zhemchuzhnikov brothers), "Fruits of Reflection: Thoughts and Aphorisms," no. 80 — published in parts from 1854, complete in the 1884 collected works. Not Leo Tolstoy. Via Quotle.info
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Provenance
The source
Work
Плоды раздумья: Мысли и афоризмы (Fruits of Reflection: Thoughts and Aphorisms), No. 80
Written under
Kozma Prutkov — the collective pen name of Aleksey K. Tolstoy and Alexei, Vladimir and Alexander Zhemchuzhnikov
First published
In parts: Sovremennik, 1854 and Iskra, 1860; complete in the 1884 Полное собрание сочинений
Translation
No translator or edition identified for the English wording
79. Чем скорее проедешь, тем скорее приедешь. — 80. Если хочешь быть счастливым, будь им. — 81. Не в совокупности ищи единства, но более — в единообразии разделения.
Aphorism No. 80
Aphorism 80 sits inside a numbered run of deadpan absurdities — No. 79 is roughly ‘the faster you travel, the sooner you arrive’ — which is exactly the context the free-floating English version loses. Text as printed on Russian Wikisource; the 1894 scan uses pre-reform spelling and ends the aphorism with an exclamation mark.
Wikiquote’s Leo Tolstoy page ↗ places “If you want to be happy, be” in its Disputed section, cites Larry Chang’s Wisdom for the Soul (2006), p. 352 as an attribution, and states the statement appears in late 20th century inspirational books “but with no known citation to original material by Tolstoy.” The same entry identifies it as a Kozma Prutkov aphorism.
Wikiquote’s Kozma Prutkov page ↗ sources the line to Fruits of Reflection (1853–1854), No. 80, giving the Russian as «Если хочешь быть счастливым — будь им!»
We checked the primary text ourselves. Russian Wikisource ↗ prints No. 80 as «Если хочешь быть счастливым, будь им.» Its header records that the set was printed in parts in Sovremennik in 1854 and in Iskra in 1860, and complete in the 1884 Полное собрание сочинений.
And we confirmed it in a scan: the 1894 Полное собрание сочиненій Козьмы Пруткова ↗ (St Petersburg: Tip. M. M. Stasyulevich) carries it in pre-reform orthography as «80. Если хочешь быть счастливымъ, будь имъ!»
The Russian original is long out of copyright: aphorism No. 80 was printed in parts from 1854 and complete in the 1884 Полное собрание сочинений, and the Internet Archive catalogues its 1894 edition ↗ as not in copyright. What cannot be dated is the English: no translator or edition has been identified for the wording “If you want to be happy, be,” and the earliest printed instance we located is a 1996 anthology — so we assert no rights status for this specific English rendering.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
The misattribution
This is a name collision, and an unusually neat one: the real author genuinely was a Count Tolstoy.
The wording“If you want to be happy, be so” Variant
All the English forms render the same six Russian words. Wikipedia ↗ gives the aphorism as “If you want to be happy, be so” and adds that it is “Frequently misattributed to Count Leo Tolstoy”; Wikiquote’s Prutkov page ↗ renders it “If you want to be happy, be!” No translator is named for any version, and the clipped form ending in be is the one that travels with Leo Tolstoy’s name attached.
Read as Prutkov, the line is a gag. His whole comic method was advice that is unimpeachably true and completely useless — counsel delivered with a straight face and no content whatsoever. Sitting in a numbered list beside «Чем скорее проедешь, тем скорее приедешь» (roughly, the faster you travel, the sooner you arrive), “If you want to be happy, be” is a joke at the expense of people who dispense wisdom. Reattributed to Leo Tolstoy, it becomes sincere spiritual instruction. Same six words, opposite meaning.
The swap sticks because it is only half wrong. A Count Tolstoy really did write it: Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, whom Wikipedia ↗ records as a second cousin of Leo Tolstoy, sharing the great-grandfather Count Pyotr Andreyevich Tolstoy. Drop the pen name, keep the surname and the title, and the far more famous Tolstoy quietly inherits the line.
Prutkov’s speciality was advice that is unimpeachably true and completely useless.
Why the English keeps changing
The Russian is «Если хочешь быть счастливым, будь им» — literally ‘if you want to be happy, be it,’ where им is a pronoun standing in for happy. English has no tidy equivalent, so each translator improvises, which is why the same aphorism circulates as “be,” “be so” and “be!”
Nobody has been identified as the translator of any of these forms. The versions that show up in English-language quote collections are anonymous, which is part of why the line drifted so easily onto the wrong Tolstoy.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Fictional aphorist, 1850s–1860s · pen name of Count Aleksey K. Tolstoy and the three Zhemchuzhnikov brothers
Kozma Petrovich Prutkov never existed. He was a literary hoax — a pompous minor official with a towering opinion of himself, invented in the 1850s by the poet Count Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy and his cousins Alexei, Vladimir and Alexander Zhemchuzhnikov, who published his fables, doggerel and aphorisms in the magazine Sovremennik and elsewhere. The joke was that Prutkov announced the blindingly obvious with total solemnity, and it worked well enough that lines such as “Look in the roots!” and “Nobody will embrace the unembraceable” are still among his most-quoted — usually without anyone recalling they were written as parody.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Kozma Prutkov [pseud. of Aleksey K. Tolstoy, Aleksei Zhemchuzhnikov, Vladimir Zhemchuzhnikov and Alexander Zhemchuzhnikov], “Плоды раздумья: Мысли и афоризмы” [Fruits of Reflection: Thoughts and Aphorisms], no. 80, in Полное собрание сочиненій Козьмы Пруткова (St Petersburg: Tip. M. M. Stasyulevich, 1894). No translator identified for the English wording “If you want to be happy, be.”
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If you want to be happy, be’?” Last verified 10 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-you-want-to-be-happy-be/