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People understand the meaning of eating lies in the nourishment of the body only when they cease to consider that the object of that activity is pleasure. ...People understand the meaning of art only when they cease to consider that the aim of that activity is beauty, i.e., pleasure.
Leo Tolstoy -
Wealth brings a heavy purse; poverty, a light spirit.
Leo Tolstoy
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For us, with the rule of right and wrong given us by Christ, there is nothing for which we have no standard. And there is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.
Leo Tolstoy -
The Churches as Churches have always been and cannot fail to be institutions not only alien to, but directly hostile towards, Christ's teaching.
Leo Tolstoy -
In life, in true life, there can be nothing better than what is. Wanting something different than what is, is blasphemy.
Leo Tolstoy -
Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.
Leo Tolstoy -
A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.
Leo Tolstoy -
The revolutionaries say: 'The government organization is bad in this and that respect; it must be destroyed and replaced by this and that.' But a Christian says: 'I know nothing about the governmental organization, or in how far it is good or bad, and for the same reason I do not want to support it.'
Leo Tolstoy
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Science has adapted itself entirely to the wealthy classes and accordingly has set itself to heal those who can afford everything, and it prescribes the same methods for those who have nothing to spare.
Leo Tolstoy -
Quite often a man goes on for years imagining that the religious teaching that had been imparted to him since childhood is still intact, while all the time there is not a trace of it left in him.
Leo Tolstoy -
The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people.
Leo Tolstoy -
The man is making preparations for a year, and does not know that he will die before evening. And I remembered God's second saying, 'Learn what is not given to man.' 'What dwells in man' I already knew. Now I learnt what is not given him. It is not given to man to know his own needs.
Leo Tolstoy