Leo Tolstoy Quotes
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Three years ago he was an honest, self-denying youth, ready to devote himself to every good cause; now he was a corrupt and refined egotist, given over to personal enjoyment. … And all this terrible transformation took place in him only because he ceased to have faith in himself, and began to believe in others.
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Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.
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For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite.
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All our problems are caused by forgetting what lives within us, and we sell our souls for the 'bowl of stew' of bodily satisfactions.
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Having acknowledged the measure of the good to be pleasure, i.e., beauty, the European upper classes went back in their comprehension of art to the gross conception of the primitive Greeks which Plato had already condemned. And with this understanding of life, a theory of art was formulated.
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Stephan Arkadievich chose neither his attitudes nor his opinions, no, the attitudes and opinions came to him on their own, just as he chose neither the style of his hat nor of his coats but got what people were wearing.
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Every one who has a heart and eyes sees that you, working men, are obliged to pass your lives in want and in hard labor, which is useless to you, while other men, who do not work, enjoy the fruits of your labor-that you are the slaves of these men, and that this ought not to exist.
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The relation of word to thought, and the creation of new concepts is a complex, delicate and enigmatic process unfolding in our soul.
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The happiness of men consists in life. And life is in labor.
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He did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart from their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation of an activity unknown to him, which was his life.
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The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.
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One can insult an honest man or an honest woman, but to tell a thief that he is a thief is merely la constation d'un fait The establishing of a fact.
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The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.
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Wealth brings a heavy purse; poverty, a light spirit.
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Tell people that war is an evil, and they will laugh; for who does not know it? Tell them that patriotism is an evil, and most of them will agree, but with a reservation. 'Yes,' they will say, 'wrong patriotism is an evil; but there is another kind, the kind we hold.' But just what this good patriotism is, no one explains.
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When a person is haughty, he distances himself from other people and thereby deprives himself of one of life’s biggest pleasures-open, joyful communication with everyone.
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The Quakers sent me books, from which I learnt how they had, years ago, established beyond doubt the duty for a Christian of fulfilling the command of non-resistance to evil by force, and had exposed the error of the Church's teaching in allowing war and capital punishment.
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There is a scale of virtues, and it is necessary, if one would mount the higher steps, to begin with the lowest; and the first virtue a man must acquire if he wishes to acquire the others, is that which the ancients called ἐγκράτεια or σωφροσύνη - i.e., self-control or moderation.
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In the spiritual realm nothing is indifferent: what is not useful is harmful.
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You will die - and it will all be over. You will die and find out everything - or cease asking.
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The most important person is the one you are with in this moment.
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Truth is … one approach to the attainment of the good, but in and of itself, it is neither the good nor the beautiful … Socrates, Pascal, and others regarded knowledge of the truth with regard to purposeless objects as incongruous with the good … by exposing deception, truth destroys illusion, which is the principle attribute of beauty.
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Vengeance is mine; I will repay.
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In life, in true life, there can be nothing better than what is. Wanting something different than what is, is blasphemy.