Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Leo Tolstoy, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Leo Tolstoy quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 1496 Leo Tolstoy quotes for you to read and share.

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If you see that some aspect of your society is bad, and you want to improve it, there is only one way to do so: you have to improve people. And in order to improve people, you begin with only one thing: you can become better yourself -- Leo Tolstoy
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The mere fact of the death of a near acquaintance aroused, as usual, in all who heard of it the complacent feeling that, it is he who is dead and not I. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There had been in his past, as in every man's, actions, recognized by him as bad, for which his conscience ought to have tormented him; but the memory of these evil actions was far from causing him so much suffering as those trivial but humiliating reminiscences. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Pierre's insanity consisted in the face that he did not wait, as before, for personal reasons, which he called people's merits, in order to love them, but love overflowed his heart, and loving people without reason, he discovered the unquestionable reasons for which it was worth loving them. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I say that the God who created the world in six days and who sent His son, and also his son himself, are not God, but that God is the one existing, incomparable good, the beginning of everything. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The soul is immortal- well then, if I shall always live, I must have lived before, lived for a whole eternity. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But instead of all that, here he was - the rich husband of an unfaithful wife, a retired gentleman-in-waiting, who liked to eat, drink, and, unbuttoning himself, to denounce the government a little, a member of the Moscow English Club, and a universally beloved member of Moscow society. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good, and man's highest happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must live, we must love, and we must believe that we live not only today on this scrap of earth, but have lived and shall live -- Leo Tolstoy
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Spring, love, happiness! Are you not weary of that stupid, meaningless, constantly repeated fraud? Always the same and always a fraud! There is no spring, no sun, no happiness! -- Leo Tolstoy
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Often seeing the success she had with young and old men and women Pierre could not understand why he did not love her. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He was not thinking that the Christian law which he had wanted to follow all his life prescribed that he forgive and love his enemies; but the joyful feeling of love and forgiveness of his enemies filled his soul. -- Leo Tolstoy
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They ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox. -- Leo Tolstoy
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What you spoke of just now was a mistake, not love -- Leo Tolstoy
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God knows of love -- Leo Tolstoy
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Love is a priceless gift. This is the only thing we can give and yet - it is all you have left... -- Leo Tolstoy
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Government is violence, Christianity is meekness, non-resistance, love. And, therefore, government cannot be Christian, and a man who wishes to be a Christian must not serve government. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and what have you done to me?' - said her charming, pathetic, dead face. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We must live. We must love. And we must believe that there's more to it all than our lives on this scrap of earth. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The greatest human achievement is love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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How strange it was to think that he, who such a short time ago dared not believe in the happiness of her loving him, now felt unhappy because she loved him too much! -- Leo Tolstoy
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Ambition, love of power, covetousness, lasciviousness, pride, anger, and revenge - were all respected. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The higher a man's conception of God, the better will he know Him. And the better he knows God, the nearer will he draw to Him, imitating His goodness, His mercy, and His love of man. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The hero of my tale," Tolstoy wrote when he was just twenty-seven, "whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all its beauty, who has been, is, and always will be beautiful - is Truth. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Is it possible to love a woman who will never understand the profoundest interests of my life?
Is it possible to love a woman simply for her beauty, to love the statue of a woman? -- Leo Tolstoy
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The heroine of my writings is She, whom I love with all the forces of my being, She who always was, is and will be beautiful, is Truth -- Leo Tolstoy
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In the love between a man and a woman there always comes a moment when this love has reached its zenith - a moment when it is unconscious, unreasoning, and with nothing sensual about it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Ambition was the old dream of his youth and childhood, a dream which he did not confess even to himself, though it was so strong that now his passion was even doing battle with his love -- Leo Tolstoy
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Every man experiences what you call love for every pretty woman and least of all for his wife. That is what the proverb says, and it is a true one. Another's wife is a swan, but one's own is bitter wormwood. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All men love live not by what they may intend for their own well-being, but by the love that dwells in others. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but divine love cannot change. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If you could forget and forgive what happened."
He snatched the chalk with nervous, trembling fingers, and breaking it, wrote the initial letters of the following phrase, "I have nothing to forget and to forgive; I have never ceased to love you. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Love them that hate you, but you can't love those you hate. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Every time I tried to express my most heartfelt desires to be morally good I met with contempt and ridicule; and as soon as I would give in to vile passions I was praised and encouraged. Ambition, love of power, self-interest, lechery, pride, anger, vengeance-all of it was highly esteemed. -- Leo Tolstoy
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For love? What antediluvian notions you have! Can one talk of love in these days?" said the ambassador's wife.
"What's to be done? It's a foolish old fashion that's kept up still," said Vronsky. -- Leo Tolstoy
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You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The meaning of life consists in the love and service of God. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We walked to meet each other up at the time of our love and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions, and there's no altering that. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When we do not love, we sleep, we are children of the dust - but love, and you are a god, you are pure, as on the first day of creation. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He had heard that women often love plain ordinary men, but he did not believe it, because he judged by himself and he could only love beautiful mysterious exceptional women. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Human love serves to love those dear to us but to love one's enemies we need divine love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I think that in order to know love one must make a mistake and then correct it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I am too proud to ever allow myself to care for a man who does not love me -- Leo Tolstoy
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Where there is love, there is God also. -- Leo Tolstoy
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By patriotism is meant, not only spontaneous, instinctive love for one's own nation, and preference for it above all other nations, but also the belief that such love and preference are good and useful. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He knew she was there by the joy and terror that took possession of his heart [ ... ] Everything was lit up by her. She was the smile that brightened everything around. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It's not so much that he can't fall in love, but he has not the weakness necessary. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All over?' he repeated. 'If I were not myself, but the handsomest, cleverest, and best man in the world, and were free, I would this moment ask on my knees for your hand and your love! -- Leo Tolstoy
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The improvement of life was only accomplished to the extent to which it was based on a change of consciousness, that is, to the extent to which the law of violence was replaced in men's consciousness by the law of love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It will pass, it will all pass, we're going to be so happy! If our love could grow any stronger it would grow stronger because there is something horrifying in it, -- Leo Tolstoy
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I'm like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he's cold, and his clothes are torn, and he's ashamed, but he's not unhappy. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And all people live, Not by reason of any care they have for themselves, But by the love for them that is in other people. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Then she thought of how life could still be happy, and how tormentingly she loved and hated him, and how terribly her heart was pounding. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Love those you hate you. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I'm not living, I'm waiting for a solution that goes on and on being put off. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Commit no act that is contrary to love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I've always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Don't steal sweet rolls. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I killed the wife when I first tasted sensual joys without love, and then it was that I killed my wife. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Love alone is the only reasonable activity or pursuit of humankind ... Fo r Love not only annihilates our fear of meaninglessness but empowers us to seek the happiness of others. And this indeed is our greatest happiness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But what desires can always be satisfied despite external circumstances? What are they? Love, self-sacrifice.' He -- Leo Tolstoy
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I don't count life as life without love -- Leo Tolstoy
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One can no more approach people without love than one can approach bees without care. Such is the quality of bees ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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No," he said to himself, "however good that life of simplicity and toil may be, I cannot go back to it. I love HER. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It's hard to love a woman and do anything. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Love ... " she repeated slowly, in a musing voice, and suddenly, while disentangling the lace, she added: "The reason I dislike this word because it means such a great deal to me, far more than you can understand. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He looked at her as a man might look at a faded flower he had plucked, in which it was difficult for him to trace the beauty that had made him pick and so destroy it -- Leo Tolstoy
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Energy rests upon love; and come as it will, there's no forcing it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There are two aspects," Alexey Alexandrovitch resumed: "those who take part and those who look on; and love for such spectacles is an unmistakable proof of a low degree of development in the spectator, I admit, but ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved sufferings. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But she was not even grateful to him for it; nothing good on Pierre's part seemed to her to be an effort, it seemed so natural for him to be kind to everyone that there was no merit in his kindness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He was nine years old; he was a child; he he knew his own soul, it was precious to him, he guarded it as the eyelid guards the eye, and without the key of love he let no one into his soul. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Rostov was not listening to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes dancing above the fire and remembered the Russian winter with a warm, bright house, a fluffy fur coat, swift sleighs, a healthy body, and all the love and care of a family. "And why did I come here?" he wondered. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I have heard it said that women love men even for their vices," Anna began suddenly, "but I hate him for his virtues. I can't live with him. Do you understand? -- Leo Tolstoy
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If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And the angel said - "I have learned that every man lives not through care of himself, but by love" ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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I love everybody and pity everybody. -- Leo Tolstoy
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That in every individual a spiritual element is manifested that gives life to all that exists, and that this spiritual element strives to unite with everything of a like nature to itself, and attains this aim through love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I think ... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The main thing, and the thing which such people as he do not understand," rejoined the lady, "is that only love consecrates marriage, and that the real marriage is that which is consecrated by love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In marriage the great thing was love, and that with love one would always be happy, for happiness rests only on oneself. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The artist's mission must not be to produce an irrefutable solution to a problem, but to compel us to love life in all its countless and inexhaustible manifestations. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The goal of the artist is not to solve a question irrefutably, but to force people to love life in all its countless, inexhaustible manifestations. If -- Leo Tolstoy
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Everything I know, I know because of love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He wanted and needed their love, but felt none towards them. He now had neither love nor humility nor purity -- Leo Tolstoy
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To love life is to love God. -- Leo Tolstoy
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To say that you can love one person all your life is just like saying that one candle will continue burning as long as you live. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul. -- Leo Tolstoy
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What time can be more beautiful than the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute the sole motives of your life? -- Leo Tolstoy
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Oh God! what am I to do if I love nothing but fame and men's esteem? -- Leo Tolstoy
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He wants to prove to me that his love for me must not interfere with his freedom -- Leo Tolstoy
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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. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallpox. -- Leo Tolstoy
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People are always happy where there is love, because their happiness in in themselves. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Your tears mean nothing! You have never loved me; you have neither heart nor honorable feeling! You are hateful to me, disgusting, a stranger - yes, a complete stranger! With pain and wrath she uttered the word so terrible to herself - stranger. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When she heard this Sonya blushed so that tears came into her eyes and, unable to bear the looks turned upon her, ran away into the dancing hall, whirled round it at full speed with her dress puffed out like a balloon, and, flushed and smiling, plumped down on the floor. -- Leo Tolstoy
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So remember: great achievements take time, there is no overnight success. -- Leo Tolstoy
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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. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It is beyond the power of the human intellect to encompass all the causes of any phenomenon. But the impulse to search into causes is inherent in man's very nature. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Enjoyment lies in the search for truth, not in finding it -- Leo Tolstoy
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All were glad, the plants, the birds, the insects, and the children. But men, grown-up men and women, did not leave off cheating and tormenting themselves and each other. -- Leo Tolstoy
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My brother's death: wise, good, serious, he fell ill while still a young man, suffered for more than a year, and died painfully, not understanding why he had lived and still less why he had to die. No theories could give me, or him, any reply to these questions during his slow and painful dying. -- Leo Tolstoy
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True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But perhaps it is always so, that men form their conceptions from fictitious, conventional types, and then - all the combinations made - they are tired of the fictitious figures and begin to invent more natural, true figures. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is a great matter. Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man's reasonable perception into feeling. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it? -- Leo Tolstoy
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Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture, so I need an inner light, which I feel I never have enough of in the autumn. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Looking into Napoleon's eyes, Prince Andrei thought about the insignificance of grandeur, about the insignificance of life, the meaning of which no one could understand, and about the still greater insignificance of death, the meaning of which no one among the living could understand or explain. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Often a man goes on for years imaging 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
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Ah, don't grieve, little falcon,' he said with that tenderly melodious gentleness with which old Russian women speak. 'Don't grieve, little friend: you suffer an hour, you live an age! So it is, my dear. And we live here, thank God, with no offense. There's bad people, and there's good -- Leo Tolstoy
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People saw more and more clearly, and now the majority see quite clearly, the senselessness and immorality of subordinating their wills to those of other people just like themselves, when they are bidden to do what is contrary not only to their interests but also to their moral sense. -- Leo Tolstoy
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With no doubt Al Hussain was one of the greatest rebels, for correcting the path of rulers who deviated from the right path. He, by his stance honorably acquired martyrdom martyrdom that free people wish to acquire. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Moreover, during his wife's confinement, something had happened that seemed extraordinary to him. He, an unbeliever, had fallen into praying, and at the moment he prayed, he believed. But that moment had passed, and he could not make his state of mind at that moment fit into the rest of his life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Prince Vasili came next. He staggered to the sofa on which Pierre was sitting and dropped onto it, covering his face with his hand. Pierre noticed that he was pale and that his jaw quivered and shook as if in an ague. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But his voice was broken, his face pale, -- Leo Tolstoy
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Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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[looked at other peoples lives and said,] 'How can one let it come to that? How can one not undo this ugly situation?' But now, when the disaster had fallen on his head, he not only did not think of how to undo the situation, but did not want to know about it at all. -- Leo Tolstoy
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While they drove past the garden the shadows of the bare trees often fell across the road and hid the brilliant moonlight, but as soon as they were past the fence, the snowy plain bathed in moonlight and motionless spread out before them glittering like diamonds and dappled with bluish shadows. -- Leo Tolstoy
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What, indeed, had I done in all my thirty years of conscious life? Not only had I failed to live my life for the sake of all, but I had not even lived it for myself. I had lived as a parasite, and once I asked myself why I had lived, the answer I received was: for nothing. -- Leo Tolstoy
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At that meeting he was struck for the first time by the endless variety of men's minds, which prevents a truth from ever presenting itself identically to two persons. Even -- Leo Tolstoy
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Man recognizes that he will not die, only when he recognizes that he was never born, but always has been, is, and will be. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Conceit is incompatible with understanding. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If you're not enjoying your work, you should either change your attitude, or change your job. -- Leo Tolstoy
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That's the way. Lay me down like a stone, O God, and raise me up like a loaf,' he muttered as he lay down, pulling his coat over him. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Satan can never be driven out by Satan. Error can never be corrected by error, and evil cannot be vanquished by evil. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In order to forgive, one must have lived through what I have lived through, and may God spare her that. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Those whom God wishes to destroy he drives mad. -- Leo Tolstoy
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How can one feel well when one is suffering in moral sense? Can any sensitive person find peace of mind nowadays? -- Leo Tolstoy
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Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe. Only the truth gives me consolation - it is the one unbreakable diamond. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Only those live who do good. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Oblonsy was fond of a pleasant joke, and sometimes liked to perplex a simple-minded man by observing that if you're going to be proud of your ancestry, why stop short at Prince Rurik and repudiate your oldest ancestor - the ape? -- Leo Tolstoy
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We have become so accustomed to the religious lie that surrounds us that we do not notice the atrocity, stupidity and cruelty with which the teaching of the Christian church is permeated. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Let me lie down, Lord, like a stone; let me rise up like new bread. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Decision it was only necessary for him to concentrate his attention for a few moments and the spirit moved him, and the best possible decision presented itself as though an inner voice had told him what to do. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Condemn me if you choose I do that myself, but condemn me , and not the path which I am following, and which I point out to those who ask me where, in my opinion, the path is. -- Leo Tolstoy
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While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. And -- Leo Tolstoy
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It was in the hands of two ministers, one lady, and two Jews, and all these people, though the way had been paved already with them, Stepan Arkadyevitch had to see in Petersburg. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But neither of them dared speak of it, and not having expressed the one thing that occupied their thoughts, whatever they said rang false. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The political is not compatible with the artistic, because the former, in order to prove, has to be one-sided. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Ferreting in one's soul, one often ferrets out something that might have lain there unnoticed. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Women have made of themselves such a weapon to act upon the senses that a young man, and even an old man, cannot remain tranquil in their presence. Watch a popular festival, or our receptions or ball-rooms. Woman well knows her influence there. You will see it in her triumphant smiles. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Death, the inevitable end of everything, confronted him for the first time with irresistible force. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Again minute followed minute and hour followed hour. Everything remained the same and there was no cessation. And the inevitable end of it all became more and more terrible. "Yes, -- Leo Tolstoy
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Natasha was happy as she had never been in her life. She was at that highest pitch of happiness, when one becomes completely good and kind, and disbelieves in the very possibility of evil, unhappiness, and sorrow. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Just imagine that the purpose of life is happinesss only-
then life becomes a cruel and senseless thing.You have to embrace what the wisdom of humanity,your intellect and your heart tell you: that the meaning of life is to serve the force that sent you into the world.Then life becomes a joy -- Leo Tolstoy
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As often happens between men who have chosen different pursuits, each, while in argument justifying the other's activity, despised it in the depth of his heart. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death
but it's more peaceful. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective,
of nature with reason, of the unconscious with the conscious, and
therefore art is the highest means of knowledge. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Talent is the capacity to direct concentrated attention upon the subject: the gift of seeing what others have not seen. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If it were not so frightening it would be amusing to observe the pride and complacency with which we, like children, take apart the watch, pull out the spring and make a toy of it, and are then surprised when the watch stops working. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And yet our existence is so organized that every personal enjoyment is purchased at the price of human suffering contrary to human nature. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The story told about him at Count Rostov's was true. Pierre had taken part in tying a policeman to a bear. He -- Leo Tolstoy
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- Every girl is proud of an offer
- Yes, every girl, but not she -- Leo Tolstoy
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One must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and now I do believe in it. Let the dead bury their dead, but while one has life one must live and be happy! -- Leo Tolstoy
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Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy. -- Leo Tolstoy
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A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because ... its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling - killing. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Power is the sum total of the wills of the mass, transfered by express or tactic agreement to rulers chosen by the masses. -- Leo Tolstoy
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What better time is there in our lives than when the two best of virtues-innocent gaiety and a boundless yearning for affection-are our sole objects of pursuit? -- Leo Tolstoy
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You know I can't stand Shakespeare's plays, but yours are even worse. -- Leo Tolstoy
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A man can spend several hours sitting cross-legged in the same position if he knows that noting prevents him from changing it; but if he knows that he has to sit with his legs crossed like that, he will get cramps, his legs will twitch and strain towards where he would like to stretch them. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Genuine religion is not about speculating about God or the soul or about what happened in the past or will happen in the future; it cares only about one thing finding out exactly what should or should not be done in this lifetime. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Marveling at this boldness and ease in her presence, and not for one second losing sight of her, though he did not look at her. He felt as though the sun were coming near him. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I am very sorry you did not find me in yesterday. I was fussing about with Germans all day. We went with Weyrother to survey the dispositions. When Germans start being accurate there's no end to it! -- Leo Tolstoy
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There lay between them, separating them, that same terrible line of the unknown and of fear, like the line separating the living from the dead. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There are such repulsive faces in the world. -- Leo Tolstoy
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As long as there is life, there is still happiness -- Leo Tolstoy
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It is dreadful that one cannot tear the past out by the roots. -- Leo Tolstoy
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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.
Read more at -- Leo Tolstoy
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No, you're going in vain," she mentally addressed a company in a coach-and-four who were evidently going out of town for some merriment. "And the dog you're taking with you won't help you. You won't get away from yourselves. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Through the influence of real art, aided by science, guided by religion ... peaceful co-operation of man is now obtained by external means - by law courts, police, charitable institutions, factory inspections ... It should be obtained by man's free and joyous activity. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The dead man reviving in his heart died again and only weighed his heart down painfully. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When Levin thought about what he was and what he lived for, he found no answer and fell into despair; but when he stopped asking himself about it, he seemed to know what he was and what he lived for, because he acted and lived firmly and definitely. -- Leo Tolstoy
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After the dark starry night came a bright, cheerful morning. The snow melted in the sun, the horses galloped swiftly, and to right and left alike passed new and various forests, fields, villages. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Everyone had something disparaging to say about the unfortunate Maltyshcheva, and the conversation began crackling merrily like a kindling bonfire. -- Leo Tolstoy
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At moments of departure and a change of life, people capable of reflecting on their actions usually get into a serious state of mind. At these moments they usually take stock of the past and make plans for the future. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Where there has been true science, art has always been its exponent. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There is nothing more harmful to you than improving only your material, animal side of life. There is nothing more beneficial, both for you and for others, than activity directed to the improvement of your soul. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The superfluity of the comforts of like destroys all joy in satisfying one's needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation ... is just what makes the choice of occupation insoluble difficult and destroys the need and even the possibility of having an occupation. p 1209 -- Leo Tolstoy
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The absence of suffering, the satisfaction of one's needs and consequent freedom in the choice of one's occupation, that is, of one's way of life, now seemed to Pierre to be indubitably man's highest happiness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The story of Ivan Ilyich life was of the simplest, most ordinary and therefore most terrible. Tolstoy defines living an ordinary life as terrible - I really do have to agree! -- Leo Tolstoy
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He spoke that refined French in which our grandparents not only spoke bit thought ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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The Lord had given them the day and the Lord had given them the strength. And the day and the strength had been dedicated to labor, and the labor was its reward. Who was the labor for? What would be its fruits? These were irrelevant and idle questions. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I would not take a young man to a lock-hospital to knock the hankering after women out of him, but into my soul to see the devils that were rending it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He was in a fairy kingdom where everything was possible.
He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm like the earth. It was clearing, and over the tops of the trees clouds were swiftly sailing as if unveiling the stars. -- Leo Tolstoy
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For the artist treating of man's relation to all sides of life there cannot and should not be heroes, but there should be men. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I'll tell you truly: I value my thought and work terribly, but in essence - think about it - this whole world of ours is just a bit of mildew that grew over a tiny planet. And we think we can have something great - thoughts, deeds! They're all grains of sand -- Leo Tolstoy
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If you want to be happy, be happy. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I have lived through much and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet, secluded life in the country with possibility of being useful to people. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When the second act was over Countess Bezukhova rose, turned to the Rostovs' box - her whole bosom completely exposed - beckoned the old count with a gloved finger, and paying no attention to those who had entered her box, began talking to him with an amiable smile. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There is only one way to put an end to evil, and that is to do good for evil. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Book is a nice companion -- Leo Tolstoy
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I developed a pathological pride and the insane conviction that it was my mission to teach people without knowing what I was teaching them. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of another's labor by force. It is immaterial whether this force be founded upon ownership of the slave or ownership of the money that he must get to live. -- Leo Tolstoy
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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. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Nothing does harm if one's mind is at peace. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Everything is indefinite, misty, and transient; only virtue is clear, and it cannot be destroyed by any force. - MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO -- Leo Tolstoy
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I now understand that my welfare is only possible if I acknowledge my unity with all the people of the world without exception. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes like those in the world. There was only one creature in the world who could concentrate for him all the brightness and meaning of life. It was she. It was Kitty. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Sitting in his old schoolroom on the sofa with little cushions on the arms and looking into Natasha's wildly eager eyes, Rostov was carried back into that world of home and childhood which had no meaning for anyone else, but gave him some of the greatest pleasure in his life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There were no other eyes in the world like them. In the whole world there was only one being able to unite in itself the universe and the meaning of life for him. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Not having yet passed through those bitter experiences which enforce upon older years circumspection and coldness, I deprived myself of the pure delight of a fresh, childish instinct for the absurd purpose of trying to resemble grown-up people. -- Leo Tolstoy
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For if we allow that human life is always guided by reason, we destroy the premise that life is possible at all. -- Leo Tolstoy
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My writing is like those little carved baskets made in prisons ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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Rostov went on ahead to fulfil the request, and to his great surprise learned that Dolokhov the brawler, Dolokhov the bully, lived in Moscow with an old mother and a hunchback sister, and was the most affectionate of sons and brothers. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Yashvin, a gambler and a rake, a man not merely without moral principles, but of immoral principles, Yashvin was Vronsky's greatest friend in the regiment. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Life is too long to say anything definitely; always say perhaps. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The vocation of every man and woman is to serve people. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Moses gave us a law, but we received the true faith through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God or will ever see God, only his son, who is in the Father, has shown us the path of life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Now he experienced a feeling akin to that of a man whom while calmly crossing a bridge over a precipice, should suddenly discover that the bridge is broken, and that there is a chasm below. That chasm was life itself, the bridge that artificial life in which Aleksey Aleksandrovich had lived. -- Leo Tolstoy
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such a state of obligatory and irreproachable idleness is the lot of a whole class - the military. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He [Vronsky] himself felt that, except that crazy fellow married to Kitty Shcherbatsky, who, quite irrelevantly had with rabid virulence told him a lot of pointless nonsense, every nobleman whose acquaintance he had made had become his partisan. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Till now I have always, thank God, been my children's friend and had their full confidence," said she, repeating the mistake of so many parents who imagine that their children have no secrets from them. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Konstantin Levin did not like talking and hearing about the beauty of nature. Words for him took away the beauty of what he saw. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Much unhappiness has come from things left unsaid -- Leo Tolstoy
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A man has to think of his soul before everything else. -- Leo Tolstoy
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A better life can only come when the consciousness of men is altered for the better; and therefore, those who wish to improve life must direct all their efforts towards changing both their own and other people's consciousness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Act as if you are, and you will become such. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I often think how unfairly life's good fortune is sometimes distributed. -- Leo Tolstoy
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For an instant he was offended, but immediately knew he could not be offended with her because she was himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The one thing necessary in life, as in art is to tell the truth. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women. -- Leo Tolstoy
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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
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Beautiful as seemed mama's face, it became more lovely when she smiled and seemed to enliven everything about her. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I've got four sons in the army, but I'm not crying about it. It's all in God's hands: you may die in your bed, or God may spare you in battle, -- Leo Tolstoy
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I do value my work awfully; but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have something great - ideas, work - it's all dust and ashes. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Only greatly insolent people establish a religious law which is to be taken for granted by others, which should be accepted by everyone on faith, without any discussion or doubts. Why must people do this? -- Leo Tolstoy
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Every happy family is happy in the same way. Every unhappy family is unhappy in different ways. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I must ask what it is you want of me?"
"What can I want? All I can want is that you should not desert me, as you think of doing," she said, understanding all he had not uttered. "But that I don't want; that's secondary. I want love, and there is none. So then all is over. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. This fulfillment showed him the eternal error men make in imagining that their happiness depends on the realization of their desires. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Levin tried to drink a little coffee, and put a piece of roll into his mouth, but his mouth could do nothing with it. He took the piece out of his mouth, put on his overcoat and went out to walk about again. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Prayer is addressed to the personal God, not because he is personal indeed, I know for certain that he is not personal, because personality is limitation, while God is unlimited. -- Leo Tolstoy
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You are in despair, because you wish to live for your own happiness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The same question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?" ... p982 -- Leo Tolstoy
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Whatever question arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their buzzing on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum drowned and obscured the voices of those who were disputing honestly. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And yet, now that years have passed, I recall it and wonder that it could distress me so much. It will be the same thing, too, with this trouble. Time will go by and I shall not mind about this either. -- Leo Tolstoy
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As the sun and each atom of ether is a shphere complete in itself, yet at the same time only a part of a whole too vast for man to comprehend, so each individual bears within himself his own purpose, yet bears it ot serve a general purpose unfathomable to man. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the state, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment, its wars -- Leo Tolstoy
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Their daughter came in in full evening dress, her fresh young flesh exposed (making a show of that very flesh which in his own case caused so much suffering), strong, healthy, evidently in love, and impatient with illness, suffering, and death, because they interfered with her happiness. Fyodor -- Leo Tolstoy
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Now I say that I know the meaning of my life:"To live for God, for my soul." And this meaning, in spite of its clearness, is mysterious and marvelous. Such, indeed, is the meaning of everything existing.(12-7) -- Leo Tolstoy
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It was as if the main screw in his head, which held his whole life together, had become stripped. The screw would not go in, would not come out, but turned in the same groove without catching hold, and it was impossible to stop turning it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I ask one thing: I ask the right to hope and suffer as I do now.
Vronsky -- Leo Tolstoy
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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 Tolstoy
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A man who does not understand the benefit of suffering does not live a clever and true life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He had been stricken with horror, not so much of death, as of life, without any knowledge of whence, and why, and how, and what it was -- Leo Tolstoy
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There are men who call land theirs, yet have never set eyes on that land and have never trodden it. There are men who call other men theirs, but yet have never set eyes on the other men, and their sole relation to those other men consists of doing them evil. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I only know this, that she thanks God for all her tribulations, and, above all, because her husband is dead. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Can it be that I have not lived as one ought?" suddenly came into his head. "But how not so, when I've done everything as it should be done? -- Leo Tolstoy
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Smiling with pleasure, they went through their memories, not sad, old people's memories, but poetic, youthful ones, those impressions from the very distant past where dream merges with reality, and they laughed softly, rejoicing at something. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I wrote: teaching what was for me the only truth, namely, that one should live so as to have the best for oneself and one's family. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Oh, how happy I am to have found it at last. Yes! It's all vanity, it's all an illusion, everything except that infinite sky. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Only by assuming an infinitesimally small unit for observation - a differential of history (that is, the common tendencies of men) - and arriving at the art of integration (finding the sum of the infinitesimals) can we hope to discover the laws of history. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The worker picked up Pakhom's spade, dug a grave, and buried him - six feet from head to heel, exactly the amount of land a man needs. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Man is created for happiness, that happiness lies in himself, in the satisfaction of simple human needs; and that all unhappiness is due, not to privation but to superfluity. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In order to undertake anything in family life, it is necessary that there be either complete discord between the spouses or loving harmony. But when the relations between spouses are uncertain and there is neither the one nor the other, nothing can be undertaken. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There can be no peace for us, only misery, and the greatest happiness -- Leo Tolstoy
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Here the conversation seemed interesting and he stood waiting for an opportunity to express his own views, as young people are fond of doing. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In reality I was ever revolving round one and the same insoluble problem, which was: How to teach without knowing what to teach. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I love her not with my mind or my imagination, but with my whole being. Loving her I feel myself to be an integral part of all God's joyous world. -- Leo Tolstoy
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To destroy governmental violence, only one thing is needed: It is that people should understand that the feeling of patriotism, which alone supports that instrument of violence, is a rude, harmful, disgraceful, and bad feeling, and, above all, is immoral. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We acknowledge God only when we are conscious of His manifestation in us. -- Leo Tolstoy
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For the first time in his life he knew the bitterest sort of misfortune, misfortune beyond remedy, misfortune his own fault. -- Leo Tolstoy
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To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject of our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals, and study the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are moved. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It can't be that life is so senseless and horrible. But if it really has been so horrible and senseless, why must I die and die in agony? There is something wrong! -- Leo Tolstoy
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What are you talking about?' cried Lukashka. 'We must go through the middle gates, of course. -- Leo Tolstoy
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-Why are you so sad?
- Because you speak to me in words and I look at you with feelings. -- Leo Tolstoy
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A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, 'Today I'm going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It hurt her to stir up these feelings, but yet she knew that that was the best part of her soul, and that that part of her soul would quickly be smothered in the life she was leading. -- Leo Tolstoy
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A human can be healthy without killing animals for food. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Every heart has its own skeletons. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Every heart has its own skeletons, as the English say. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Each of us has his skeletons in his soul, as the English say. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Everything within him and around him seemed confused, senseless, and loathsome. But in this very loathing for everything around him, Pierre took a sort of irritating pleasure. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Life seemed to Prince Andrey a series of senseless phenomena following one another without any connection. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He knew now the one thing of importance; and that one thing was at first there, in the drawing room, and then began moving across and came to a standstill at the door. Without turning round he felt the eyes fixed on him, and the smile, and he could not help turning round. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Either you are so underdeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or you won't sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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He regarded his whole life as a continual round of amusement which someone for some reason had to provide for him. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Her motherly instinct told her that there was too much of something in Natasha, and that it would prevent her from being happy. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The most important person is the one you are with in this moment. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The shore was God, the stream was tradition, and the oars were the free will given to me to make it to the shore where I would be joined with God. Thus the force of life was renewed within me, and I began to live once again. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There will be today, there will be tomorrow, there will be always, and there was yesterday, and there was the day before ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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And for him, who lived in a certain circle, and who required some mental activity such as usually develops with maturity, having views was as necessary as having a hat. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If you want to be right, I can give you that satisfaction. You're in the right; but I'm going all the same. -- Leo Tolstoy
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She did not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could not talk of outside matters. -- Leo Tolstoy
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For a long time afterwards, in prison, when moral change took place in me, I thought of that moment, recalled what I could of it, and considered it. I remembered for an instant, before the action I had a terrible consciousness I was killing a defenseless woman, my wife! -- Leo Tolstoy
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Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I began to realize that the most profound wisdom of man was rooted in the answers given by faith and that I did not have the right to deny them on the grounds of reason; above all, I realized that these answers alone can form a reply to the question of life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And so the liberal tendency became a habit with Stepan Arkadyich, and he liked his newspaper, as he liked a cigar after dinner, for the slight haze it produced in his head. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Deliberately she shrouded the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in the faintly perceptible smile. -- Leo Tolstoy
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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. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Muhammad has always been standing higher than the Christianity. He does not consider god as a human being and never makes himself equal to God. Muslims worship nothing except God and Muhammad is his Messenger. There is no any mystery and secret in it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It is very difficult to tell the truth, and young people are rarely capable of it. His -- Leo Tolstoy
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I wrote everything into Anna Karenina, and nothing was left over. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Here I am alive, and it's not my fault, so I have to try and get by as best I can without hurting anybody until death takes over. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And Anatole, with the partiality dull-witted people have for any conclusion they have reached by their own reasoning, repeated the argument he had already put to Dolokhov a hundred times. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But I shall spare her. On the ancient monuments of barbarism and despotism I will inscribe great words of justice and mercy -- Leo Tolstoy
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Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and agonies of the soul, but all the time his most tormenting tragedy has been, is, and will always be, the tragedy of the bedroom. -- Leo Tolstoy
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She still found no words in which she could express the complexity of her feelings; indeed, she could not even find thoughts in which she could clearly think out all that was in her soul. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Benefit performances, bad paintings and statues, philanthropic societies, Gypsies, schools, subscription dinners, carousing, the Masons, churches, books - no one and nothing met with refusal, -- Leo Tolstoy
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When you understand that you will die to-morrow, if not to-day, and nothing will be left, then everything is so unimportant! ... So one goes on living, amusing oneself with hunting, with work - anything so as not think of death -- Leo Tolstoy
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War is not courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that, and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Were possible for a man to discover a mode of existence in which he could feel that, though idle, he was of use to the world and fulfilling his duty, -- Leo Tolstoy
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Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky - Stiva, as he was called in the fashionable world - woke up at his usual hour, that is, at eight o'clock in the morning, not in his wife's bedroom, but on the leather-covered sofa in his study. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Man is flowing. In him there are all possibilities: he was stupid, now he is clever; he was evil, now he is good, and the other way around. In this is the greatness of man. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Napoleon, the man of genius, did this! But to say that he destroyed his army because he wished to, or because he was very stupid, would be as unjust as to say that he had brought his troops to Moscow because he wished to and because he was very clever and a genius -- Leo Tolstoy
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Death is finished, he said to himself. It is no more! -- Leo Tolstoy
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She was jealous not of any particular woman but of the decrease of his love. Not having an object for her jealousy, she was on the lookout for it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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What is so exquisite is that not a word has been said by me or by her, but we understand each other so well in this unseen language of looks and tones that this evening more clearly than ever she told me she loves me. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: 'what shall we do and how shall we live -- Leo Tolstoy
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If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If once we begin judging and arguing about everything, nothing sacred will be left! -- Leo Tolstoy
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If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side! -- Leo Tolstoy
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In infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is formed a bubble organism, and that bubble lasts a while and bursts, and that bubble is Me. -- Leo Tolstoy
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She showed that alertness, that swiftness of reflection comes out in men before a battle, in conflict, in the dangerous and decisive moments of life - those moments when a man shows once and for all his value, and that all his past has not been wasted but has been a preparation for these moments. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The little princess, like an old war horse that hears the trumpet, unconsciously and quite forgetting her condition, prepared for the familiar gallop of coquetry, without any ulterior motive or any struggle, but with naive and lighthearted gaiety. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Life is fragile and absurd. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He looked at her, and the fury expressed in her face alarmed and amazed him. He did not understand how his pity for her exasperated her. She saw in him sympathy for her, but not love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Rakes, those male Magdalenes, have a secret feeling of innocence similar to that which female Magdalenes have, based on the same hope of forgiveness. 'All will be forgiven her, for she loved much; and all will be forgiven him, for he enjoyed much. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It's wrong, what you say, and I beg you, if you're a good man,
to forget what you've said, as I forget it," she said at last.
"Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever
forget ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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There's a way out of every situation. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Throughout the performance Levin felt like a deaf person watching a dance. He was quite perplexed when the music stopped and felt very tired as a result of strained attention quite unrewarded. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I rejoice in what I have, and don't fret for what I haven't, -- Leo Tolstoy
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As though I had been going steadily downhill, imagining that I was going uphill. So it was in fact. In public opinion I was going uphill, and steadily as I got up it, life was ebbing away from me ... And now the work's done, there's only death. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Although Vasili Andreevich felt quite warm in his two fur coats, especially after struggling in the snow drift, a cold shiver ran down his back on realizing that he must really spend the night where they were. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There it is!' he thought with rapture. 'When I was already in despair, and when it seemed there would be no end- there it is! She loves me. She's confessed it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He had heard that women often did care for ugly and ordinary men, but he did not believe it, for he judged by himself, and he could not himself have loved any but beautiful, mysterious, and exceptional women. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to drink
he recovered. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There was not a single cross or worried-looking face. All seemed to have left their cares and anxieties in the porter's room with their hats, and were all deliberately getting ready to enjoy the material blessings of life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If a man has the will he can learn anything. -- Leo Tolstoy
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As a man cannot lift a mountain, and as a kindly man cannot kill an infant, so a man living the Christian life cannot take part in deeds of violence. Of what value then to him are arguments about the imaginary advantages of doing what is morally impossible for him to do? -- Leo Tolstoy
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Only when Prince Andrei was gone did Rostov think of what he ought to have said. And he was still more angry at having omitted to say it. He -- Leo Tolstoy
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You've said nothing, of course, and I ask nothing," he was saying; "but you know that friendship's not what I want: that there's only one happiness in life for me, that word that you dislike so ... yes, love! ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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Three hundred persons took their seats in the dining-room, according to their rank and importance: the more important nearer to the honoured guest, as naturally as water flows deepest where the land lies lowest. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to the establishment of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by the recognition and profession of the truth by every man. -- Leo Tolstoy
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A desire of desires: the melancholy. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The error arises from the learned jurists deceiving themselves and others, by asserting that government is not what it really is, one set of men banded together to oppress another set of men , but, as shown by science, is the representation of the citizens in their collective capacity. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Napoleon is great because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses, preserved all that was good in it - equality of citizenship and freedom of speech and of the press - and only for that reason did he obtain power. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is happiness. There is much, much before us. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We all think we only have to be knocked a little bit off course and we've lost everything, but it's only the start of something new and good. Where there is life, there is happiness. There -- Leo Tolstoy
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There can be only one permanent revolution- a moral one: the regeneration of the inner man. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The idea presented itself definitely to his mind that it was in his power to exchange the dreary, artificial, idle, and individualistic life he was leading for this laborious, pure, and socially delightful life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It never before happened that the rich ruling and more educated minority, which has the most influence on the masses, not only disbelieved the existing religion but was convinced that no religion is no longer needed. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In precisely the same way the specialty of government is not to obey, but to enforce obedience. And a government is only a government so long as it can make itself obeyed, and therefore it always strives for that and will never willingly abandon its power. -- Leo Tolstoy
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No matter what the work you are doing, be always ready to drop it. And plan it, so as to be able to leave it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There is, and can be, no cause of a historical event except the one cause of all causes. But -- Leo Tolstoy
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We shall have to stay the night here,' he said, as if preparing to spend the night at an inn, and he proceeded to unfasten the collar-straps. The buckles came undone.
'But shan't we be frozen?' remarked Vasili Andreevich.
'Well, if we are we can't help it.' said Nikita. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All art has this characteristic-it unites people. -- Leo Tolstoy
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My tongue is my enemy. Brothers -- Leo Tolstoy
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Every revolution by force only puts more violent means of enslavement into the hands of the persons in power. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He bent his head towards his shoulder and tried to look pitiful and humble, but for all that he was radiant with freshness and health. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Anna took a knife and fork in her beautiful, white, ring-adorned hands and began to demonstrate. She obviously could see that her explanation could not make anything understood, but, knowing that her speech was pleasant and her hands were beautiful, she went on explaining. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Millions of men, renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to east to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east to the west slaying their fellows. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The egoist feels lonely, surrounded by threatening and alien events; all his desires are sunk in his own concerns. A kind person lives in a world of beneficent events, whose goodness matches his own. - ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER -- Leo Tolstoy
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The further one goes, the better the land seems. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The legislation of Quran will spread all over the world, because it agrees with the mind, logic and wisdom. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Woman is deprived of rights from lack of education, and the lack of education results from the absence of rights. We must not forget that the subjection of women is so complete, and dates from such ages back that we are often unwilling to recognise the gulf that separates them from us. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All that day she felt as if she were acting in a theatre with better actors than herself, and that her bad performance was spoiling the whole affair. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Knowledge is limitless. Therefore, there is a minuscule difference between those who know a lot and those who know very little. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Kings are the slaves of history. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He remembered his mother's love for him, and his family's, and his friends', and the enemy's intention to kill him seemed impossible. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If a man aspires to a righteous life, his first act of abstinence if from injury to animals. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Here it is. Let's say you're married, you love your wife, but you're attracted by another woman.'
'Excuse me, but I absolutely cannot understand how after eating my fill here I could go past a bakery and steal a roll. -- Leo Tolstoy
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False. Everything by which you have lived and live now is all a deception, a lie, concealing both life and death from you. -- Leo Tolstoy
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No, life is not over at thirty-one! Prince Andrei suddenly decided finally and decisively. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be economized if it is to last. Prince -- Leo Tolstoy
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Quos vilt perdere dementat' Whome the gods wish to destroy, they first drive made (Latin). -- Leo Tolstoy
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And the dog you're taking with you will be no help to you. You can't get away from yourselves. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The magnanimity and sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed, she is so kind hearted that she can't look at the blood, but enjoys serving the calf up with sauce -- Leo Tolstoy
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Universal military service may be compared to the efforts of a man to prop up his falling house who so surrounds it and fills it with props and buttresses and planks and scaffolding that he manages to keep the house standing only by making it impossible to live in it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He had learned that, as there is no situation in the world in which a man can be happy and perfectly free, so there is no situation in which he can be perfectly unhappy and unfree. -- Leo Tolstoy
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So you make a sacrifice!' he threw special emphasis on the last word. 'Well, so do I. What could be better? We complete in generosity
what an example of family happiness! -- Leo Tolstoy
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The men of this party had both the quality and the defect of frankness in their opinions. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In the spiritual realm nothing is indifferent: what is not useful is harmful. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I felt a wish never to leave that room - a wish that dawn might never come, that my present frame of mind might never change. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The difference between real material poison and intellectual poison is that most material poison is disgusting to the taste, but intellectual poison, which takes the form of cheap newspapers or bad books, can unfortunately sometimes be attractive. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Blessed are the peacemakers; theirs is the kingdom of heaven -- Leo Tolstoy
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Christianity in its true sense puts an end to the State. It was so understood from its very beginning, and for that Christ was crucified. -- Leo Tolstoy
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when he was officiating in a depressed state of mind he felt that the influence produced on him by the service would endure. And it did in fact weaken till only the habit remained. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Alexey Alexandrovitch was standing face to face with life, with the possibility of his wife's loving someone other than himself, and this seemed to him very irrational and incomprehensible because it was life itself. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. "Where is it? What death?" There was no fear because there was no death.
In place of death there was light. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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A battle is won by the side that is absolutely determined to win. Why did we lose the battle of Austerlitz? Our casualties were about the same as those of the French, but we had told ourselves early in the day that the battle was lost, so it was lost. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Every reform by violence is to be deprecated, because it does little to correct the evil while men remain as they are, and because wisdom has no need of violence. -- Leo Tolstoy
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How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? ... All will end in death, all! -- Leo Tolstoy
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Religions are the exponents of the highest comprehension of life ... within a given age in a given society ... a basis for evaluating human sentiments. If feelings bring people nearer to the religion's ideal ... they are good; if these estrange them from it, and oppose it, they are bad. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Conversation sprang up as to the elegance and realism of her acting -- the sort of conversation that is always repeated and is always the same. In the midst of the conversation Fedor Petrovich glanced at Ivan Ilych and became silent. The others also looked at him and grew silent. Ivan -- Leo Tolstoy
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Why am I going?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. "You know that I am going in order to be where you are," said he. "I cannot do otherwise."
"Not a word, not a movement of yours will I ever forget, nor can I ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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In order to correctly define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and consider it as one of the conditions of human life ... Reflecting on it in this way, we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of effective communication between people. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If you want to be happy, try only to please God, not people. -- Leo Tolstoy
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She was so plain that neither of them could think of her as a rival, so they began dressing her with perfect sincerity, and with the naive and firm conviction women have that dress can make a face pretty. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The sun rose brilliant and quickly wore away the thin layer of ice that covered the water, and all the warm air was quivering with the steam that rose up from the quickened earth. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered. -- Leo Tolstoy
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War is not a polite recreation, but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to realize this and not make a game of it ... as it stands now it's the favorite pastime of the idle and frivolous. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The best solution is to be kind and good while ignoring the opinions of others. -- Leo Tolstoy
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One of the most obtuse superstitions is the superstition of the scientists who say that man can exist without faith. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He felt that in the depth of his soul something had been put in its place, settled down, and laid to rest. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Debates conceal rather than reveal the truth. Truth is revealed in solitude. -- Leo Tolstoy
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PART TWO I IN October 1805 the Russian army was occupying the villages and towns of the Archduchy of Austria, and yet other regiments freshly arriving from Russia were settling near the fortress of Braunau and burdening the inhabitants on whom they were quartered. Braunau -- Leo Tolstoy
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Do not be interested in the quantity of people who respect and admire you, but in their quality. If bad people dislike you, so much the better. - LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA -- Leo Tolstoy
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HISTORY IS the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put into words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a single nation, appears impossible. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I have discovered nothing. I have only found out what I knew. I understand the force that in the past gave me life, and now too gives me life. I have been set free from falsity, I have found the Master. -- Leo Tolstoy
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That's how it always is," Koznyshev interrupted him. "We Russians are always like that. Perhaps it's one of our good national characteristics. I mean this faculty of seeing our own shortcomings. But we overdo it. We comfort ourselves with ironic remarks which are always on the tip of the tongue. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Il ne faut jamais rien outrer: One should never overdo -- Leo Tolstoy
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Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed his head in assent. -- Leo Tolstoy
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A Gentleman is a man who will pay his gambling debts even when he knows he has been cheated. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In the morning he would sit down to work, finish his allotted task, then take the little lamp from the hook, put it on the table, get his book from the shelf, open it, and sit down to read. And the more he read, the more he understood, and the brighter and happier it grew in his heart. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Forgive me not according to my unworthiness, but according to thy loving kindness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The purpose of life is to bring forth goodness. Now, in this life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And whatever people might say about the time having come when young people must arrange their future for themselves, she could not believe it any more than she could believe that loaded pistols could ever be the best toys for five-year-old children. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And however much the princess was assured that in our time young people themselves must settle their fate, she was unable to believe it, as she would have been unable to believe that in anyone's time the best toys for five-year-old children would be loaded pistols. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Pierre was one of those people who are strong only when they feel themselves perfectly pure. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Man can be master of nothing while he fears death, but he who does not fear it possesses all. If there were no suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I have found that a story leaves a deeper impression when it is impossible to tell which side the author is on. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There was in her the glow of the real diamond among glass imitations. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We are all created to be miserable, and that we all know it, and all invent means of deceiving each other. And when one sees the truth, what is one to do? -- Leo Tolstoy
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It is terrible when people do not know God, but it is worse when people identify as God what is not God. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The essence of any religion lies solely in the answer to the question: why do I exist, and what is my relationship to the infinite universe that surrounds me? -- Leo Tolstoy
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The chief attraction of military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I led the life of so many other so-called respectable people, - that is, in debauchery. And like the majority, while leading the life of a debauche, I was convinced that I was a man of irreproachable morality. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The General belonged to the learned type of military men who believed that liberal and humane views can be reconciled with their profession. But being by nature a kind and intelligent man, he soon felt the impossibility of such a reconciliation. -- Leo Tolstoy
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By words one transmits thoughts to another, by means of art, one transmits feelings. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Suddenly I heard the words of Christ and understood them, and life and death ceased to seem to me evil, and instead of despair I experienced happiness and the joy of life undisturbed by death. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Progress consists only in the greater clarification of answers to the basic questions of life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The question was summed up for him thus: "If I do not accept the answers Christianity gives to the problems of my life, what answers do I accept? -- Leo Tolstoy
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All such questions as, for instance,of the cause of failure of crops, of the adherence of certain tribes to their ancient belief, etc.
questions which, but for the convenient intervention of the official machine are not, and cannot be solved for ages
received full, unhesitating solution. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If once we admit, be it for a single hour or in a single instance, that there can be anything more important than compassion for a fellow human being, then there is no crime against man that we cannot commit with an easy conscience. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The Jew - is the symbol of eternity. ... He is the one who for so long had guarded the prophetic message and transmitted it to all mankind. A people such as this can never disappear. The Jew is eternal. He is the embodiment of eternity. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He talked of this, and passionately longed to hear more of Kitty, and, at the same time, was afraid of hearing it. He dreaded the breaking up of the inward peace he had gained with such effort. "Yes, -- Leo Tolstoy
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[T]he social relationship of young women to young men ... now seemed to Kitty like ignominious exposure of merchandise to be taken by the highest bidder. -- Leo Tolstoy
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To know God and to live is the same thing. God is Life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Pierre 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 Tolstoy
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A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible. -- Leo Tolstoy
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What doubt can you have of the Creator when you behold His creation? ... Who has decked the heavenly firmament with its stars? Who has clothed the earth in its beauty? How could it be without the creator? -- Leo Tolstoy
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He felt that he was himself and did not wish to be anyone else. He only wished now to be better than he had been formerly -- Leo Tolstoy
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He felt himself, and did not want to be anyone else. All he wanted now was to be better than before. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys' house. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But who discovered it? Not reason. Reason discovered the struggle for existence, and the law that requires us to oppress all who hinder the satisfaction of our desires. That is the deduction of reason. But loving one's neighbor reason could never discover, because it's irrational. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Boredom: the desire for desires. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look at or listen to them. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The only purpose of education is freedom; the only method is experience. -- Leo Tolstoy
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A moment's pain can be a lifetime's gain. -- Leo Tolstoy
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That's my one desire, to be caught," answered Vronsky, with his serene,
good-humored smile. "If I complain of anything it's only that I'm not caught
enough, to tell the truth. I begin to lose hope. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there in life any purpose which the inevitable death that awaits me does not undo and destroy? -- Leo Tolstoy
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Peter Ivanovich, like everyone else on such occasions, entered feeling uncertain what he would have to do. All he knew was that at such times it is always safe to cross oneself. But -- Leo Tolstoy
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At the men's end of the table the talk grew more and more animated. The colonel told them that the declaration of war had already appeared in Petersburg and that a copy, which he had himself seen, had that day been forwarded by courier to the commander in chief. -- Leo Tolstoy
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They haven't an idea what happiness is; they don't know that without our love, for us there is neither happiness nor unhappiness - no life at all -- Leo Tolstoy
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'Thou shalt not kill' does not apply to murder of one's own kind only, but to all living beings and this commandment was inscribed in the human breast long before it was proclaimed from Sinai. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Let others be afraid, but the soul is not afraid of anything. It lives according to its own laws. It is bigger than space and older than time. It gives courage against all the misfortunes of life. - RALPH WALDO EMERSON -- Leo Tolstoy
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You wait a bit, wait a bit," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling and touching his hand. "I've told you what I know, and I repeat that in this delicate and tender matter, as far as one can conjecture, I believe the chances are in your favor. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Vegetarianism is the taproot of humanitarianism. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Cor, what a godawful stink!" That was all that remained of this man in the land of the living. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The Christian churches and Christianity have nothing in common save in name: they are utterly hostile opposites. The churches are arrogance, violence, usurpation, rigidity, death; Christianity is humility, penitence, submissiveness, progress, life. -- 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
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The social conditions of life can only be improved by people exercising self-restraint. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine. -- Leo Tolstoy
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How simple and natural were her words, and how likely that she was simply sleepy! She felt herself clad in an impenetrable armor of falsehood. She felt that some unseen force had come to her aid and was supporting her. -- Leo Tolstoy
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God gave the day, God gave the strength. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He was convinced that, as a duck is so made that it must live in water, so God had made him such that he must spend thirty thousand rubles a year and always occupy a prominent position in society. He -- Leo Tolstoy
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All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom. -- Leo Tolstoy
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WAR AND PEACE EPILOGUE -- Leo Tolstoy
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I threw it away feeling sorry to have vainly destroyed a flower that looked beautiful in its proper place. How many different plant lives man destroys to support his own existence. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The best method for a given teacher is the one which is most familiar to the teacher. -- Leo Tolstoy
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One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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To regard Christ as God, and to pray to him, are to my mind the greatest possible sacrilege. -- Leo Tolstoy
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A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We are conscious of the force of man's life, and we call it freedom -- Leo Tolstoy
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Men are so accustomed to maintaining external order by violence that they cannot conceive of life being possible without violence. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Our profession is dreadful, writing corrupts the soul. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in searching for it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Dear Lord, what a madhouse the world is! -- Leo Tolstoy
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In order to know what he is, a man must first know what the sum of this mysterious humanity is, a humanity made up of people who, like himself, do not understand what they are. -- Leo Tolstoy
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One need only admit the premise that public peace of mind is in danger and any action finds justification. All the horrors of the Reign of Terror in France were based entirely on solicitude for public tranquillity. -- Leo Tolstoy
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One need only admit that public tranquillity is in danger and any action finds a justification. All -- Leo Tolstoy
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Life and death are in God's hands -- Leo Tolstoy
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Thus ran his thoughts; he wanted to go to bed, but he felt loath to tear himself away from the book. -- Leo Tolstoy
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With all my soul I longed to be in a position to join with the people in performing the rites of their faith, but I could not do it. I felt that I would be lying to myself, mocking what was sacred to me, if I were to go through with it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Money, in itself, is evil. And therefore he who gives money gives evil. -- Leo Tolstoy
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His father always talked to him - so Seryozha felt - as though he were addressing some boy of his own imagination, one of those boys that exist in books, utterly unlike himself. And Seryozha always tried with his father to act being the story-book boy. -- Leo Tolstoy
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So much the worse for you!" he said mentally, like a man who, after vainly attempting to extinguish a fire, should fly in a rage with his vain efforts and say, "Oh, very well then! you shall burn for this! -- Leo Tolstoy
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A person who has spoiled his stomach will criticize his meal saying that the food is bad; the same thing happens with people who are not satisfied with their lives -- Leo Tolstoy
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And the light by which she had read the book filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and evil, flared up more brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that had been in darkness, flickered, began to grow dim, and was quenched forever. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders? -- Leo Tolstoy
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Stepan Arkadyevitch, who liked a joke, was fond of puzzling a plain man by saying that if he prided himself on his origin, he ought not to stop at Rurik and disown the first founder of his family
the monkey. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Stepan Arkadyevitch felt exactly the difference that Pyotr Oblonsky described. In Moscow he degenerated so much that if he had had to be there for long together, he might in good earnest have come to considering his salvation; in Petersburg he felt himself a man of the world again. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And so liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch's, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In spite of Stepan Arkadyevitch's efforts to be an attentive father and husband, he never could keep in his mind that he had a wife and children. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn. -- Leo Tolstoy
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No one knew better than Stepan Arkadyevitch how to hit on the exact line between freedom, simplicity, and official stiffness necessary for the agreeable conduct of business. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The liberal party said that marriage is an institution quite out of date, and that it needs reconstruction; and family life certainly afforded Stepan Arkadyevitch little gratification, and forced him into lying and hypocrisy, which was so repulsive to his nature. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All this was as it should be, because welfare and happiness of the world depended on him, and wearied though he was he would still not refuse universe the assistence. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Napoleon, with his usual assurance that whatever entered his head was right, wrote to Kutuzov the first words that occurred to him, though they were meaningless. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I feel that I am entitled to my share of lightheartedness and there is nothing wrong with enjoying one's self simply, like a boy. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I became convinced that almost all the priests of that religion, the writers, were immoral, and for the most part men of bad, worthless character, much inferior to those whom I had met in my former dissipated and military life; -- Leo Tolstoy
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the irrepressible, quivering brilliance of her eyes and her smile set him on fire -- Leo Tolstoy
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If you don't strain the strings, and then try to break them, you'll find it a difficult job; but strain a string to its very utmost, and the mere weight of one finger on the strained string will snap it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If people tell you that
you should live your life preparing for the future, do not believe
them. Real Life is found only in the present. -- Leo Tolstoy
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So on receiving the news of Ivan Ilych's death the first thought of each of the gentlemen in that private room was of the changes and promotions it might occasion among themselves -- Leo Tolstoy
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Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When the suffering of another creature causes you to feel pain, do not submit to the initial desire to flee from the suffering one, but on the contrary, come closer, as close as you can to her who suffers, and try to help her. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I assure you that I sleep anywhere, and always like a dormouse. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He meditated on the the use to which he should devote that power of youth which is granted to man only once
in a lifetime: that force which gives man a power of making himself, or even as it seemed to him - of making the universe
into anything he wishes. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Every general and every soldier was conscious of his own insignificance, aware of being but a drop in that ocean of men, and yet at the same time was conscious of his strength as a part of that enormous whole. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When I am engrossed in an idea, all else is mere diversion. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Every monarch in the world, except the Emperor of China, wears a military uniform, and bestows the greatest rewards on the man who kills the greatest number of his fellow-creatures. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs and other heads of states. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He always felt himself dependent on Chief Master who sent him into this life, he knew that when dying he would still be in that Master's power and would not be ill-used to and accustomed to. -- Leo Tolstoy
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That's it, come on! -- Leo Tolstoy
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Can't you go tomorrow?' she said. 'No, I can't! The business I'm going for, the warrant and the money, won't have come by tomorrow,' he replied. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He thought of nothing, desired nothing, except not to lag behind and to do the best job he could. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of people
that's in your hands. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But tie yourself up with a woman and, like a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And all you have of hope and strength merely weighs you down and torments you with regret. -- Leo Tolstoy
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To be an enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Just think! This whole world of ours is only a speck of mildew sprung up on a tiny planet, yet we think we can have something great - thoughts,, actions! They are all but grains of sand -- Leo Tolstoy
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I had begun to feel that life was a repetition of the same thing; that there was nothing new either in me or in him; and that, on the contrary, we kept going back as it were on what was old. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand."

- Anna Karenina {Anna Karenina} -- Leo Tolstoy
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The terrible thing is that it's impossible to tear the past out by the roots. Impossible to tear it out, but possible to hide the memory of it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Darya Alexandrovna made no reply. She suddenly felt that she had got far away from Anna; that there lay between them a barrier of questions on which they could never agree, and about which it was better not to speak. -- Leo Tolstoy
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People who are given to deliberating on their actions generally find themselves in a serious frame of mind when it comes to embarking on a journey or changing their mode of life. At such moments one reviews the past and forms plans for the future. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The same talk, the same thoughts, and always about the same things! And they are all satisfied and confident that it should be so, and will go on living like that till they die. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In spite the mountains of books written about art, no precise definition of art has been constructed. And the reason for this is that the conception of art has been based on the conception of beauty. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Constant idleness should be included in the tortures of hell, but it is, on the contrary, considered to be one of the joys of paradise. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Are we not all flung into the world for no other purpose than to hate each other, and so to torture ourselves and one another? -- Leo Tolstoy
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Where there's law there's injustice, -- Leo Tolstoy
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And it never occurs to anyone to admit a greatness that is not commensurate with the standard of right and wrong is merely to admit one's own nothingness and immeasurable puniness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I am sure that nothing has such a decisive influence upon a man's course as his personal appearance, and not so much his appearance as his belief in its attractiveness or unattractiveness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It seems that only God can know the truth; it is to Him alone we
must appeal, and from Him alone expect mercy. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And just as the hungry stomach eagerly accepts every object it can get, hoping to find nourishment in it, Vronsky quite unconsciously clutched first at politics, then at new books, and then at pictures. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do. But if even that cannot be, command me to disappear, and I disappear. You shall not see me if my presence is distasteful to you. -- Leo Tolstoy
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That religion is only a curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of the people -- Leo Tolstoy
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Happiness is in your ability to love others. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The only real science is the knowledge of how a person should live his life. And this knowledge is open to everyone. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Reason unites us, not only with our contemporaries, but with men who lived two thousand years before us, and with those who will live after us. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If you no longer believe in the God in whom you believed in before, this comes from the fact that there was something wrong with your belief, and you must strive to understand better that which you call God. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I felt how much better and more dignified it was for me to show off the finer side of my soul than of my body. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It may be suggested by some books that it is not a sin to kill an animal, but it is written in our own hearts - more clearly than in any book - that we should take pity on animals in the same way as we do on humans. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Our real innermost concern was to get as much money and praise as possible. To gain that end we could do nothing except write books and papers. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Read the best books first, otherwise you'll find you do not have time.
- Henry David Thoreau -- Leo Tolstoy
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The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Rest, nature, books, music ... such is my idea of happiness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I never could understand the fondness some people have for confusing their minds by dwelling on mystical books that merely awaken their doubts and excite their imagination, giving them a bent for exaggeration quite contrary to Christian simplicity. Let -- Leo Tolstoy
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And the candle by the light of which she had been reading that book filled with anxieties, deceptions, grief and evil, flared up brighter than ever, lit up for her all that had once been darkness, sputtered, grew dim and went out for ever. -- Leo Tolstoy
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blue riding breeches, who were swarming near the bridge, and then at what was approaching -- Leo Tolstoy
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But I am alive still. Now what's to be done? what's to be done? he said in despair. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Everything was made bright by her. She was the smile that shed light all around her. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But all profit that is out of proportion to the labor expended is dishonest. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When Mother smiled, no matter how nice her face had been before, it became incomparably nicer and everything around seemed to brighten up as well. -- Leo Tolstoy
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People involve themselves in countless activities which they consider to be important, but they forget about one activity which is more important and necessary than any other, and which includes all other things: the improvement of their soul -- Leo Tolstoy
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Like the majority of irreproachably virtuous women, wearying often of the monotony of a virtuous life, Dolly from a distance excused illicit love, and even envied it a little. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Music is love in search of a voice. -- Leo Tolstoy
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God knows, but He's waiting -- Leo Tolstoy
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An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life - becoming a better person. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait ... there is nothing stronger than these two: patience and time, they will do it all. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Now one often saw only her face and body, while her soul was not seen at all. -- Leo Tolstoy
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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 Tolstoy
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And indeed, if Evgeny Irtenev was mentally ill, then all people are just as mentally ill, and the most mentally ill are undoubtably those who see signs of madness in others that they do not see in themselves. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It boils down to this: we should have done with humbug, and let war be war, and not a game ... If there were none of this magnanimity business in warfare, we should never go to war, except for something worth facing certain death for. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Each person's task in life is to become an increasingly better person. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And Pierre's soul was dimly but joyfully filled not by the story itself but by its mysterious significance: by the rapturous joy that lit up Karataev's face as he told it, and the mystic significance of that joy. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Can it be that there is not enough space for man in this beautiful world, under those immeasurable, starry heavens? -- Leo Tolstoy
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The highest wisdom has but one science-the science of the whole-the science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The only thing that we know is that we know nothing, and that is the highest flight of human wisdom. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not. -- Leo Tolstoy
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By faith it appears that in order to understand the meaning of life I must renounce my reason, the very thing for which alone a meaning is required. -- Leo Tolstoy
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...the ones who leaped to the forefront and shouted louder than the rest were all the failures and the aggrieved: commanders-in-chief without armies, ministers without ministries, journalists without journals, party chiefs without partisans. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But by marriages of prudence we mean those in which both parties have sown their wild oats already. That's like scarlatina - one has to go through it and get it over. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And then all at once love turns up, and you're done for, done for. -- Leo Tolstoy
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To live an honest life you have to strive hard, get involved, fight, make mistakes, begin something and give it up, begin again, struggle endlessly, and suffer loss. As for tranquility - it's spiritual baseness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But if you are alive - live: tomorrow you'll die as I might have died an hour ago. And is it worth tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment of life in comparison with eternity? -- Leo Tolstoy
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The question of how things will settle down is the only important question ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Olenin always took his own path and had an unconscious objection to the beaten tracks. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The law of violence is not a law, but a simple fact which can only be a law when it does not meet with protest and opposition. It is like the cold, darkness and weight, which people had to put up with until recently when warmth, illumination and leverage were discovered ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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He suffered from an unlucky faculty - common to many men, especially Russians - the faculty of seeing and believing in the possibility of good and truth, and at the same time seeing too clearly the evil and falsity of life to be capable of taking a serious part in it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He disliked contradiction, and still more, arguments that were continually skipping from one thing to another, introducing new and disconnected points, so that there was no knowing to which to reply. -- Leo Tolstoy
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That only shows you have no heart,' she said. But her eyes said that she knew he had a heart, and that was why she was afraid of him -- Leo Tolstoy
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What am I coming for?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. "You know that I have come to be where you are," he said; "I can't help it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There are two sides to life for every individual: a personal life, in which his freedom exists in proportion to the abstract nature of his interests, and an elemental life within the swarm of humanity, in which a man inevitably follows laws laid down for him. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The government in which I believe is that which is based on mere moral sanction ... the real law lives in the kindness of our hearts. If our hearts are empty, no law or political reform can fill them. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The happiness of men consists in life. And life is in labor. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When I came to you out of all that dust and heat and toil, I positively smelt violets at once. But not the sweet violet - you know, that early dark violet that smells of melting snow and spring grass. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The children themselves repaid her griefs with small joys. These joys were so small that they could not be seen, like gold in the sand, and in her bad moments she saw only the griefs, only sand; but there were also good moments, when she saw only joys, only gold. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class included all the girls in the world except her, and they had all the usual human feelings and were very ordinary girls; while the other class -herself alone- had no weaknesses and was superior to all humanity. -- Leo Tolstoy
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An honest man and an honest woman may be insulted, but to tell a thief he's a thief is simply la constatation d'un fait. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Great works of art are only great because they are accessible and comprehensible to everyone. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It's not those who are handsome we love, but those we love who are handsome. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It is no sin to look at a nice girl. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Faith - or not faith - I don't know what it is - but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul. -- Leo Tolstoy
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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 Tolstoy
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Pierre had for the first time experienced that strange and fascinating feeling in the Slobodsky palace, when he suddenly felt that wealth and power and life, all that men build up and guard with such effort ,is only worth anything through the joy with which it can all be cast away. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Before we can study the central issues of life today, we must destroy the prejudices and fallacies born of previous centuries. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The chief if not the sole cause of the enslavement of the Indian peoples by the English lies in this very absence of a religious consciousness and of the guidance for conduct which should flow from it - a lack common in our day to all nations East and West, from Japan to England and America alike. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Languidly, like an actor repeating a stale part. Anna -- Leo Tolstoy
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There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy. It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness and despair, showing the possibility of consolation. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He never chooses an opinion, he just wears whatever happens to be in style. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Levin scowled and was dumb. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I find it difficult now to recall and understand the dreams which then filled my imagination. Even when I can recall them, I find it hard to believe that my dreams were just like that: they were so strange and so remote from life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Drops Dripped. Quiet talk went on. Horses neighed and scuffled. Someone snored. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I'm never going to get married. I'm going to be a ballet-dancer. But don't tell anybody. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Go to the devil, I'm busy. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All these institutions [prisons] seemed purposely invented for the production of depravity and vice, condensed to such a degree that no other conditions could produce it, and for the spreading of this condensed depravity and vice broadcast among the whole population. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Like all mad men, I thought everyone was mad except myself ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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Perhaps it's because I appreciate all I have so much that I don't worry about what I haven't got. -- Leo Tolstoy
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A man is never such an egotist as at moments of spiritual ecstasy. At such times it seems to him that there is nothing on earth more splendid and interesting than himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He was one of those diplomats who like and know how to work, and, despite his laziness, he occasionally spent nights at his desk. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There are as many loves as there are hearts. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If you do not know your place in the world and the meaning of your life, you should know there is something to blame; and it is not the social system, or your intellect, but the way in which you have directed your intellect. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The true meaning of Christ's teaching consists in the recognition of love as the supreme law of life, and therefore not admitting any exceptions. -- Leo Tolstoy
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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. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Where there is law there is injustice -- Leo Tolstoy
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If you feel that you are not free, look for the reason inside you. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Death is more certain than the morrow, than night following day, than winter following summer. Why is it then that we prepare for the night and for the winter time, but do not prepare for death. We must prepare for death. But there is only one way to prepare for death - and that is to live well. -- Leo Tolstoy
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She began to wish he would die; yet she did not want him to die because then his salary would cease. And this irritated her against him still more. She considered herself dreadfully unhappy just because not even his death could save her, -- Leo Tolstoy
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The possibility of killing one's self is a safety valve. Having it, man has no right to say life is unbearable. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The feelings resembled memories; but memories of what? Apparently one can remember things that have never happened. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We are all brothers, and yet I live by receiving a salary for arraigning, judging and punishing a thief or a prostitute, whose existence is conditioned by the whole consumption of my life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Therein is the whole business of one's life; to seek out and save in the soul that which is perishing. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The simplest and shortest ethical precept is to be served as little as possible ... and to serve others as much as possible. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The time is fast approaching when to call a man a patriot will be the deepest insult you can offer him. Patriotism now means advocating plunder in the interest of the privileged classes of the particular State system into which we have happened to be born. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The man who ten years earlier and one year later was considered a bandit and outlaw is sent a two-day sail from France, to an island given into his possession, with his guards and several million, which are paid to him for some reason. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If there be a single law governing the actions of men, freewill cannot exist, for man's will would be subject to that law. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I suffered most from the feeling that custom was daily petrifying our lives into one fixed shape, that our minds were losing their freedom and becoming enslaved to the steady passionless course of time. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Woman is generally so bad that the difference between a good and a bad woman scarcely exists. -- Leo Tolstoy
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What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the world! -- Leo Tolstoy
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There is only one real knowledge: that which helps us to be free. Every other type of knowledge is mere amusement. - VISHNU PURANA, -- Leo Tolstoy
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This is where the strength of the physician lies, be he a quack, a homeopath or an allopath. He supplies the perennial demand for comfort, the craving for sympathy that every human sufferer feels. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All government, without exception, conceal from the people everything that might further their emancipation, and encourage all that degrades and demoralizes them: all manner of amusements of the senses, even physical means of stupefaction, such as tabacco and alcohol. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Oh, things are wretched, miserable!' said Oblonsky, and sighed heavily. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He is so used to living a purely spiritual life that he cannot reconcile himself to realities, and, after all, Varenka is a reality! -- Leo Tolstoy
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To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling - this is the activity of art. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Patriotism is a survival from barbarous times which must not only be evoked and educated but which must be eradicated by all means - by preaching, persuasion, contempt and ridicule. -- Leo Tolstoy
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After the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and one hero less on earth -- Leo Tolstoy
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All families are happy, all families are alike. -- Leo Tolstoy
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My field was God's earth. Wherever I ploughed, there was my field. Land was free. It was a thing no man called his own. Labor was the only thing men called their own. -- Leo Tolstoy
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They get a glimpse of red lips under a short veil, and exquisite little feet. -- Leo Tolstoy
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A leader is the wave pushed ahead by the ship. -- Leo Tolstoy
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What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you deal with incompatibility. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He saw nothing but death or the advance towards death in everything. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The strangeness and absurdity of these replies arise from the fact that modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one asks. -- Leo Tolstoy
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God forgive me everything!' she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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Even if the absence of government really did mean anarchy in a negative, disorderly sense - which is from from being the case - even then, no anarchical disorder could be worse than the position to which government has led humanity. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Honest work is much better than a mansion. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In the city the wretched feel less sad. One can live there a hundred years without being noticed, and be dead a long time before anybody will notice it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All men's instincts, all their impulses in life, are efforts to increase their freedom. Wealth and poverty, health and disease, culture and ignorance, labor and leisure, repletion and hunger, virtue and vice, are all terms for greater or less degree of freedom. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Today, nobody sees, or wishes to see, that in our time the enslavement of the majority of men is based on money taxes, levied on land and otherwise, which are collected by government from the subjects. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Art should cause violence to be set aside and it is only art that can accomplish this. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The religious superstition is encouraged by means of the institution of churches, processions, monuments, festivities ... The so-called clergy stupefy the masses ... They befog the people and keep them in an eternal condition of stupefaction. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Oh no, Papa, Kitty objected warmly. Varenka adores her. And besides, she does so much good! Ask anyone you like! Everybody knows her and Aline Stah. Perhaps, he said, pressing her arm with his elbow. But it is better to do good so that, ask whom you will, no one knows anything about it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I think that when you remember, remember, remember everything like that, you could go on until you remember what was there before you were in the world. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I don't allow myself to doubt myself even for a moment. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Nikolushka and his upbringing, Andre, and religion were Princess Marya's comforts and joys; but, besides that, since every human being needs his personal hope, Princess Marya had in the deepest recesses of her soul a hidden dream and hope, which provided the main comfort of her life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We call beauty that which supplies us with a particular pleasure. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He could not help knowing that when he thought of death, he thought with all the force of his intellect. He knew too that the brains of many great men, whose thoughts he had read, had brooded over death and yet knew not a hundredth part of what his wife and Agafea Mihalovna knew about it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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What an immense mass of evil must result ... from allowing men to assume the right of anticipating what may happen. -- Leo Tolstoy
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War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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European countries unresistingly submitted to the introduction of general military service
i.e., to a state of slavery involving a degree of humiliation and submission incomparably worse than any slavery of the ancient world. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Nowhere nor in anything, except in the assertion of the Church, can we find that God or Christ founded anything like what churchmen understand by the Church. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I want movement, not a calm course of existence. I want excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I feel in myself a superabundance of energy which finds no outlet in our quiet life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Had these beliefs, if I had not known that I must live for God and not for my own desires? I should have robbed and lied and killed. Nothing of what makes the chief happiness of my life would have existed for me. -- Leo Tolstoy
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One need only posit some threat to the public tranquility and any action can be justified.
All the horrors of the reign of terror were based on concern for public tranquility. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Perhaps it is even more important to know what one should not think about than what one should think about. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All governments are in equal measure good and evil. The best ideal is anarchy. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I'll come some day," he said. "But women, my boy, they're the pivot everything turns upon. Things are in a bad way with me, very bad. And it's all through women. Tell me frankly now," he pursued, picking up a cigar and keeping one hand on his glass; "give me your advice. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There are two Gods, there is the God that people generally believe in - a God who has to serve them. This God does not exist. But the God whom people forget - the God whom we all have to serve - exists, and is the prime cause of our existence and of all that we perceive. -- Leo Tolstoy
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As is always the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect - the shortness of her upper lip and her half-open mouth - seemed to be her own special and peculiar form of beauty. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Next day at the review the Tsar asked Prince Andrey where he desired to serve; and Bolkonsky ruined his chances for ever in the court world by asking to be sent to the front, instead of begging for a post in attendance on the Tsar's person. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It was only at her prayers that she felt able to think calmly and clearly either of Prince Andrey or Anatole, with a sense that her feelings for them were as nothing compared with her feel of worship and awe of God. -- Leo Tolstoy
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What's all this love of arguing? No one ever convinces anyone else. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Pierre did not go to the army, but remained in deserted Moscow, still in the same anxiety, irresolution, in the fear and at the same time the joy of awaiting something terrible. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Why is gambling forbidden while women in costumes which evoke sensuality are not forbidden? They are a thousand times more dangerous! -- Leo Tolstoy
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...without any conscientious scruples condoning impurity in themselves, required ideal and angelic purity in their women... -- Leo Tolstoy
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There are no conditions to which a man may not become accustomed, particularly if he sees that they are accepted by those about him. -- Leo Tolstoy
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This foolish smile he could not forgive himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Perfection is impossible without humility. Why should I strive for perfection, if I am already good enough? -- Leo Tolstoy
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All the wounds of society, the wounds of poverty, of vice, of ignorance - all will be laid bare. Is there not something re-assuring in this? -- Leo Tolstoy
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Yes: if only a hundredth of the efforts spent in curing diseases were spent in curing debauchery, disease would long ago have ceased to exist, whereas now all efforts are employed, not in extirpating debauchery, but in favoring it, by assuring the harmlessness of the consequences. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But women, my boy, they're the pivot everything turns upon. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Let the dead bury their dead, but while one has life one must live and be happy! thought -- Leo Tolstoy
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Now, in that moment, he knew that neither all his doubts, nor the impossibility he knew in himself of believing by means of reason, hindered him in the least from addressing God. It all blew off his soul like dust. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Once we're thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost, but it's only here that the new and the good begins. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But does it make any difference now?" he thought. "And what will be there, and what has been done here? Why was I so sorry to part with life? There was something in this life I didn't and still don't understand... -- Leo Tolstoy
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Society in itself is no great harm, but unsatisfied social aspirations are a bad and ugly business. We must certainly accept, and we will. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she would not be happy -- Leo Tolstoy
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Ah, how good! How nice! he said to himself, when he remembered that his wife and the French were no more. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Better to know a few things which are good and necessary than many things which are useless and mediocre -- Leo Tolstoy
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He felt he was himself and did not want to be otherwise. He only wanted to be better than he had been before. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The most important of all sciences man can and must learn is the science of living so as to do the least evil and the greatest possible good. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It is this law of love and its recognition as a rule of conduct in all our relations with friends, enemies and offenders which must inevitably bring about the complete transformation of the existing order of things,
not only among Christian nations, but among all the peoples of the globe -- Leo Tolstoy
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Physical violence is the basis of authority. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Men pray to the Almighty to relieve poverty. But poverty comes not from God's laws-it is blasphemy of the worst kind to say that. Poverty comes from man's injustice to his fellow man. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If he had a reason for preferring Liberalism to the Conservatism of many in his set, it was not that he considered Liberalism more reasonable, but because it suited his manner of life better. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But I know nothing, nothing, and can know nothing but what I've been told along with everybody else. -- Leo Tolstoy
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What is important is not the length of life, but the depth of life. What is important is not to make life longer, but to take your soul out of time, as every sublime act does -- Leo Tolstoy
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Loose an hour and you cannot catch up in a year. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Now that Vronsky had deceived her, she was prepared to love Levin and to hate Vronsky. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I must have physical exercise, or my temper'll certainly be ruined. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If in Doubt, don't do it -- Leo Tolstoy
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the count, who always solved questions that seemed to him perplexing by deciding that everything was splendid. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The life of our class, of the wealthy and the learned, was not only repulsive to me but had lost all meaning. The sum of our action and thinking, of our science and art, all of it struck me as the overindulgences of a spoiled child. -- Leo Tolstoy
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They talked about peace, but did not believe in its possibility. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Spiritual activity, education, civilization, culture, the idea are all vague, indefinite concepts, under the banner of which it is quite convenient to use words that have a still less clear meaning and therefore can easily be plugged into any theory. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Although on a conscious level a man lives for himself, he is actually being used for the attainment of humanity's historical aims. A deed once done becomes irrevocable, and any action comes together over time with millions of actions performed by other people to create historical significance. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Anna Pavlovna turned toward him and, with a Christian mildness that expressed forgiveness of his indiscretion, nodded and said: "I hope to see you again, but I also hope you will change your opinions, my dear Monsieur Pierre. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Speak to her now? But that's just why I'm afraid to speak - because I'm happy now, happy in hope, anyway ... . And then? ... . But I must! I must! I must! Away with weakness! -- Leo Tolstoy
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Then he thought himself unhappy, but happiness was all in the future; now he felt that the best happiness was already in the past. -- Leo Tolstoy
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With one hand I take thousands of rubles from the poor, and with the other I hand back a few kopecks. -- Leo Tolstoy
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What could all that matter in comparison with the will of God, without Whose care not a hair of man's head can fall? -- Leo Tolstoy
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I can't praise a young lady who is alive only when people are admiring her, but as soon as she is left alone, collapses and finds nothing to her taste
one who is all for show and has no resources in herself -- Leo Tolstoy
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feeling consolation in the sense that he had found to which division of regulating principles this new circumstance could be properly referred. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Vronsky saw nothing and no one. He felt himself as a king, not because she had made an impression on Anna-he did not yet believe that-but because the impression she had made on him gave him happiness and pride. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If only we could manage to see the beam in our own eye in time, how kind we should be. -- Leo Tolstoy
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A Christian cannot help being free, because in the pursuit and attainment of his object, no one can either hinder or retard him. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The true office of any faith is to give life a meaning which death cannot destroy. -- Leo Tolstoy
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A monkey was carrying two handfuls of peas. One little pea dropped out. He tried to pick it up, and split twenty. He tried to pick up the twenty, and split them all. Then he lost his temper, scattered the peas in all directions and ran away -- Leo Tolstoy
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You think that your laws correct evil - they only increase it. There is but one way to end evil - by rendering good for evil to all men without distinction. -- Leo Tolstoy
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From that day the eldest princess quite changed toward Pierre and began knitting a striped scarf for him. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The only happy marriages I know are arranged ones. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I was now prepared to accept any faith so long as it did not demand a direct denial of reason, which would have been a deceit. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It was clear that everything considered important and good was insignificant and repulsive, and that all this glamour and luxury hid the old well-known crimes, which not only remained unpunished but were adorned with all the splendor men can devise. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I am not strange but I feel queer. I am like that sometimes. I feel like crying all the time. It is very silly but it will pass. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one's reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And not only the pride of intellect, but the stupidity of intellect. And, above all, the dishonesty, yes, the dishonesty of intellect. Yes, indeed, the dishonesty and trickery of intellect. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Anna spoke not only naturally and intelligently, but intelligently and casually, without attaching any value to her own thoughts, yet giving great value to the thoughts of the one she was talking to. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Man has received direct from God only one instrument wherewith to know himself and to know his relation to the universe
he has no other
and that instrument is reason. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If you once realize that to-morrow, if not to-day, you will die and nothing will be left of you, everything becomes insignificant! -- Leo Tolstoy
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A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But Levin was in love, and so it seemed to him that Kitty was so perfect in every respect that she was a creature far above everything earthly; and that he was a creature so low and so earthly that it could not even be conceived that other people and she herself could regard him as worthy of her. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Everything falls into place for the man who knows how to wait. -- Leo Tolstoy
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She, his Dolly, forever fussing and worrying over household details, -- Leo Tolstoy
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She was utterly unlike what she had been when he first saw her. Both morally and physically she had changed for the worse. [ ... ] He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Questions about her feelings, about what has been or might be going on in her soul are non of my business; they are the business of her conscience and belong to religion. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The less importance he attached to the opinion of men, the more did he feel the presence of God within him. -- Leo Tolstoy
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This ideal of glory and grandeur--which consists not merely in considering that nothing wrong that one does but in priding oneself on every crime once commits. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Occasionally she glanced at him, asking with her glance, 'Is this what I think?' "I understand,' she said, blushing. "What is this word?' he said, pointing to the "n' that signified the word "never." ... She wrote: t, I, c,g,n,o,a. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But men are now united in states; that work is done; why now maintain exclusive devotion to one's own state, when this produces terrible evils for all. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not commensurable with the standard of right and wrong is merely to admit one's own nothingness and immeasurable meanness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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God is in the midst, and each drop tries to expand so as to reflect Him to the greatest extent. And it grows, merges, disappears from the surface, sinks to the depths, and again emerges. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It is a rude feeling, because it is natural only to people standing on the lowest level of morality, and expecting from other nations such outrages as they themselves are ready to inflict. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the greater the number of people he is connected with, the more power he has over other people, the more obvious is the predestination and inevitability of his every action. -- Leo Tolstoy
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As often happens between people who have chosen different ways, each of them, while rationally justifying the other's activity, despised it in his heart. To each of them it seemed that the life he led was the only real life, and the one his friend led was a mere illusion. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And the moujiks? How do the moujiks die? -- Leo Tolstoy
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In infinite space and time everything develops, becomes more perfect and more complex, is differentiated,is to say nothing at all. Those are all words with no meaning, for in the infinite is neither complex nor simple, no forward nor backward, or better or worse. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Love does not exist. There exists the physical need for intercourse,
and the rational need for a mate in life -- Leo Tolstoy
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And do you know, there's less charm in life, when one thinks of death, but there's more peace. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders and frowned, as lovers of music do when they hear a false note. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Bells rang, the stewards rushed forward, and - like rye shaken together in a shovel - the guests who had been scattered about in different rooms came together and crowded in the large drawing-room by the door of the ballroom. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That is how I explain it to myself. It can't be helped! He said no more, but expressed his -- Leo Tolstoy
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The old with the old, the young with the young, the hostess by the tea table, on which there were exactly the same cakes in a silver basket as the Panins had at their soiree - everything was exactly the same as with everyone else. -- Leo Tolstoy
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a huge pear in his hand for his wife, he had not found his wife in the drawing-room, to his surprise had not found her in the study either, and saw her -- Leo Tolstoy
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Violence produces only something resembling justice, but it distances people from the possibility of living justly, without violence. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It's really ludicrous; her object is doing good; she a Christian, yet she's always angry; and she always has enemies, and always enemies in the name of Christianity and doing good. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Levin felt so resolute and serene that no answer, he fancied, could affect him. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Parents now are not expected to live at all, but to exist altogether for their children. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Kutuzov looked at him with eyes wide with dismay, and then took off his cap and crossed himself. 'God rest his soul! May the Lord's will be done with all of us!' He sighed deeply and was silent. 'I loved and respected him, and I sympathize with you with all my heart.' He embraced -- Leo Tolstoy
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I know a gallant steed by tokens sure, And by his eyes I know a youth in love, -- Leo Tolstoy
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Man must not check reason by tradition, but contrariwise, must check tradition by reason. -- Leo Tolstoy
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An agile but unintelligent and abnormal German, possessed of the mania of grandeur. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It is impossible that all men have been doomed to suffer this awful horror! -- Leo Tolstoy
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This child, with his naive outlook on life was the compass which showed them the degree of their departure from what they knew but did not want to know. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Every violent reform deserves censure, for it quite fails to remedy evil while men remain what they are, and also because wisdom needs no violence. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He who commits his life to this son of man does not die, but he who does not commit his life to him destroys himself by not trusting to what is life itself Division (death) consists in this, that life came into the world, but men go away from that life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I want to enrich medical science with a new term: Arbeitskur. -- Leo Tolstoy
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To live in the needs of the day, find forgetfulness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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and Ivan Ilyich was left alone with the consciousness that his life was poisoned and was poisoning the lives of others, and that this poison did not weaken but penetrated more and more deeply into his whole being. With -- Leo Tolstoy
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Why do i live? In the infinity of space, and infinity of time infinitely small particles mutate with infinite complexity. When you understand the laws of these mutations, you'll understand why you live. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Effort is not a means to lead us to happiness. Effort itself is happiness -- Leo Tolstoy
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Seize the moment of happiness ... love and be loved. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But every time there have been conquests there have been conquerors; every time there has been a revolution in any state there have been great men, -- Leo Tolstoy
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There was no answer, except the general answer life gives to all the most complex and insoluble questions. That answer is: one must live for the needs of the day, in other words, become oblivious. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Just when the question of how to live had become clearer to him, a new insoluble problem presented itself - Death. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He could find no answer, except life's usual answer to the most complex and insoluble questions. That answer is: live in the needs of the day, that is, find forgetfulness. He -- Leo Tolstoy
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The question how to live had hardly begun to grow a little clearer to him, when a new, insoluble question presented itself - death. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The march of humanity, springing as it does from an infinite multitude of individual wills, is continuous. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In a writer there must always be two people - the writer and the critic. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I do not live my own life, there is something stronger than me
which directs me. I suffer;
but formerly I was dead and only now do I live. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It was necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power
the soldiers who fired, or transported provisions and guns
should consent to carry out the will of these weak individuals ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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If you asked someone, 'Can you play the violin?' and he says, 'I don't know, I have not tried, perhaps I can,' you laugh at him. Whereas about writing, people always say: 'I don't know, I have not tried,' as though one had only to try and one would become a writer. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It showed him the mistake men make in picturing to themselves happiness as the realization of their desires. -- Leo Tolstoy
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They had to return to the one sure and never-failing resource- slander. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There was within him a deep unexpressed conviction that all would be well, but that one must not trust to this and still less speak about it, but must only attend to one's own work. And he did his work, giving his whole strength to the task. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, but nobody thinks of changing himself -- Leo Tolstoy
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The kind aunt with whom I lived, herself the purest of beings, always told me that there was nothing she so desired for me as that I should have relations with a married woman: 'Rien ne forme un juene homme, comme une liaison avec une femme comme il faut'.{1} -- Leo Tolstoy
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And the cause of everything is that which we call God. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Well, pray if you like, only you'd do better to use your judgment. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Woman, you see, is an object of such a kind that study it as much as you will, it is always quite new. -- Leo Tolstoy
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One must be cunning and wicked in this world. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Besides, it seemed to him that the society of women was rather derogatory to his manhood. He -- Leo Tolstoy
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Countess Bezukhova quite deserved her reputation of being a fascinating woman. She could say what she did not think - especially what was flattering - quite simply and naturally. -- Leo Tolstoy
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She understood he became a monk in order to be above those who considered his superiors...it led him to God, to his childhood's faith which had never been destroyed in him... -- Leo Tolstoy
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The teaching of the church, theoretically astute, is a lie in practice and a compound of vulgar superstitions and sorcery. -- Leo Tolstoy
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How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself -- Leo Tolstoy
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Everyone wants to change the world, but nobody wants to change himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Vegetarianism serves as the criterion by which we know that the pursuit of moral perfection on the part of humanity is genuine and sincere. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I ask only one thing: I ask the right to hope and suffer as I do now; but if even that is impossible, command me to disappear and I will do it.
-Vronsky -- Leo Tolstoy
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Anna had the faculty of blushing. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But by the term 'scientific' is understood just what was formerly understood by the term 'religious': just as formerly everything called 'religious' was held to be unquestionable simply because it was called religious, so now all that is called 'scientific' is held to be unquestionable. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Mentioning 'our days' as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing, imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of 'our days' and that human characteristics change with the times ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase. -- Leo Tolstoy
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As though tears were the indispensable oil without which the machinery of mutual confidence could not run smoothly between the two sister, the sisters after their tears talked, not of what was uppermost in their minds, but though they talked of outside matters, they understood each other. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The faces of these young people, especially those who were military men, bore that expression of condescending respect for their elders which seems to say to the older generation, "We are prepared to respect and honor you, but all the same remember that the future belongs to us. -- Leo Tolstoy
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to the foe in the field you need not yield" -- Leo Tolstoy
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What tormented Ivan Ilych most was the deception, the lie, which for some reason they all accepted, that he was not dying but was simply ill, and that he only need keep quiet and undergo a treatment and then something very good would result. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Boredom is desire seeking desire. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I don't think anything," she said, "but I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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Medieval Italian life had recently become so fascinating for Vronsky that he even began wearing his hat and a wrap thrown over his shoulder in a medieval fashion, which was very becoming to him. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We are asleep until we fall in Love! -- Leo Tolstoy
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Ah! you wish us to be only objects of sensuality? All right; by the aid of sensuality we will bend you beneath our yoke,' say the woman. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Art is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feeling. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The very fact of the death of someone close to them aroused in all who heard about it, as always, a feeling of delight that he had died and they hadn't. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Happy people have no history. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The scent of flowers grew stronger and came from all sides; the grass was drenched with dew; a nightingale struck up in a lilac bush close by and then stopped on hearing our voices; the starry sky seemed to come down lower over our heads. -- Leo Tolstoy
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this duel! Have these people no feeling, or honor? Knowing -- Leo Tolstoy
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You consider war to be inevitable? Very good. Let everyone who advocates war be enrolled in a special regiment of advance-guards, for the front of every storm, of every attack, to lead them all! -- Leo Tolstoy
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Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and am in doubt most of the time. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It is possible to live only as long as life intoxicates us; once we are sober we cannot help seeing that it is all a delusion, a stupid delusion. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Those moments when once and for all a man shows his worth and that his whole past has not been in vain but has been a preparation for those moments. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All that day she had had the feeling that she was playing in the theatre with actors better than herself and that her poor playing spoiled the whole thing. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Too much polishing and you spoil things. There's a limit to the expressibility of ideas. You have a new thought, an interesting one. Then, as you try to perfect it, it ceases to be new and interesting, and loses the freshness with which it first occurred to you. You're spoiling it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And Levin, a happy father and a man in perfect health, was several times so near suicide that he hid the cord, lest he be tempted to hang himself, and was afraid to go out with his gun, for fear of shooting himself. But Levin did not shoot himself, and did not hang himself; he went on living. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And that which yesterday was the novel opinion of one man, to-day becomes the general opinion of the majority. -- Leo Tolstoy
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and the camp swarmed with well-provisioned sutlers and Austrian Jews offering all sorts of tempting wares. The -- Leo Tolstoy
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The appreciation of the merits of art of the emotions it conveys depends upon an understanding of the meaning of life ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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No one has yet added up all the heavy, stress-filled workdays as well as the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives that are wasted to produce the world's amusements. It is for this reason that "amusements" are not so amusing. -- Leo Tolstoy
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One's writing is good only when the intelligence and the imagination are in equilibrium. As soon as one of them overbalances the other, it's all up; you may as well throw it away and begin afresh. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Childhood candor ... shall I ever find you again? -- Leo Tolstoy
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No one is satisfied with his fortune,and everyone is satisfied with his wit. -- Leo Tolstoy
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No one is satisfied with his position, but every one is satisfied with his wit -- Leo Tolstoy
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We all talked at the same time, not listening to one another, sometimes seconding and praising one another in order to be seconded and praised in turn, sometimes getting angry with one another - just as in a lunatic asylum. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He was a passionate adherent of the new ideas and of Speransky, and the busiest purveyor of news in Petersburg, one of those men who choose their opinions like their clothes - according to the fashion - but for that very reason seem the most vehement partisans -- Leo Tolstoy
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I know now that people only seem to live when they care only for themselves, and that it is by love for others that they really live. He who has Love has God in him, and is in God - - because God is Love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Life consists in penetrating the unknown, and fashioning our actions in accord with the new knowledge thus acquired. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The Jew is that sacred being, who has brought down from Heaven the everlasting fire, and has illumined with it the entire world. He is the religious source, spring, and fountain out of which all the rest of the peoples have drawn their beliefs and their religions. -- Leo Tolstoy
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On which side is truth, - on the side of the thoughts which seem true and well-founded, or on the side of the lives of others and myself? -- Leo Tolstoy
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No. All I say is that it is not argument that convinces me of the necessity of a future life, but this: when you go hand in hand with someone and all at once that person vanishes there, into nowhere, and you yourself are left facing that abyss, and look in. And I have looked in. . . . -- Leo Tolstoy
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Before any definite step can be taken in a household, there must be either complete division or loving accord between husband and wife. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He went down trying not to look long at her, as though she were the sun, but he saw her, as one sees the sun, without looking. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won't come out for twenty years, if you really wish to learn. -- Leo Tolstoy
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What right had I to imagine that she would wish to unite her life with mine? Who and What am I? A man of no account, wanted by no one and of no use to anyone. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There is one evident, indubitable manifestation of the Divinity, and that is the laws of right which are made known to the world through Revelation. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Pierre's insanity consisted in not waiting, as he used to do, to discover personal attributes which he termed "good qualities" in people before loving them; his heart was now overflowing with love, and by loving people without cause he discovered indubitable causes for loving them. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When she went upstairs to dress, and looked into the looking glass, she noticed with joy that it was one of her good days, and that she was in complete possession of all her forces, - she needed this so for what lay before her: she was conscious of external composure and free grace in her movements. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It is within my power either to serve God or not to serve Him. Serving Him, I add to my own good and the good of the whole world. Not serving Him, I forfeit my own good and deprive the world of that good, which was in my power to create. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Even in the best, most friendly and simplest relations of life, praise and commendation are essential, just as grease is necessary to wheels that they may run smoothly. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Yes, I suppose so, answered Anna, as though wondering at the boldness of his question; but the irrepressible, quivering brilliance of her eyes and her smile set him on fire as she said it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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They were dealt with as in war, and they naturally employed the means that were used against them. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Well, is ev'wything weady?' asked Denisov. 'Bwing the horses. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Another's wife is a white swan, and ours is bitter wormwood. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Stavrovicha, is a selfish, vain, and unattractive creature who deserts her husband in favour of a young officer, Balashev. Her elderly, betrayed -- Leo Tolstoy
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Count Vronsky: I love you!
Anna Karenina: Why?
Count Vronsky: You can't ask Why about love! -- Leo Tolstoy
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But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Why ask? Why doubt what you cannot help knowing? Why use words when words cannot express what one feels? -- Leo Tolstoy
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I must drink lots of tea or I cannot work.

Tea unleashes the potential which slumbers in the depth of my soul. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Children: a torment and nothing more. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Add your light to the sum of light. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Paulucci and Michaud both attacked Wolzogen simultaneously in French. Armfeldt addressed Pfuel in German. Toll explained to Volkonski in Russian. Prince Andrew listened and observed in silence. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Desire nothing for thyself, seek nothing, be not anxious or envious. Man's future and thy own fate must remain hidden from thee, but live so that thou mayest be ready for anything. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And the most awful thing about it is that it's all my fault - all my fault, though I'm not to blame. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But really, why should you distress yourself? Whoever stirs up the past - out with his eye! Who is not a sinner before God and to blame before the Tsar, as the saying is? -- Leo Tolstoy
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But how do schools help matters?" "They give the peasant fresh wants. -- Leo Tolstoy
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No matter when, at whatever moment, if she were asked what she was thinking about she could reply quite correctly - one thing, her happiness and her unhappiness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Don't seek God in temples. He is close to you. He is within you. Only you should surrender to Him and you will rise above happiness and unhappiness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If only [people] understood that every thought is both false and true! False by one-sidenedness resulting from man's inability to embrace the whole truth, and true as an expression of one fact of human endeavor. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Therefore, all these causes-billions of causes-coincided so as to bring about what happened. And consequently none of them was the exclusive cause of the event, but the event had to take place simply because it had to take place. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Christ's teaching, which came to be known to men, not by means of violence and the sword," they say, "but by means of non-resistance to evil, gentleness, meekness, and peaceableness, can only be diffused through the world by the example of peace, harmony, and love among its followers. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But I'm glad you'll see me as I am. Above all, I wouldn't want people to think that I want to prove anything. I don't want to prove anything, I just want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself. I have that right, haven't I? -- Leo Tolstoy
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We exchanged disagreeable remarks. The impression of this first quarrel was terrible. I say quarrel, but the term is inexact. It was the sudden discovery of the abyss that had been dug between us. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It often struck me as strange and disagreeable to hear him utter severe strictures upon some of these persons who seemed to me so good. -- Leo Tolstoy
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A cigar is a sort of thing, not exactly a pleasure, but the crown and outward sign of pleasure. -- Leo Tolstoy
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That which constitutes the cause of the economic poverty of our age is what the English call over-production (which means that a mass of things are made which are of no use to anybody, and with which nothing can be done). -- Leo Tolstoy
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Our business is to do our duty, to cut and slash, not to think, that's all, he concluded. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But the princess had never seen the beautiful expression of her eyes; the expression that came into them when she was not thinking of herself. As is the case with everyone, her face assumed an affected, unnatural, ugly expression as soon as she looked in the looking glass. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And since no difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions, they never agreed in any opinion, and had long, indeed, been accustomed to jeer without anger, each at the other's incorrigible aberrations. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And even now I experience that blessed feeling. To love one's neighbors, to love one's enemies. Always to love
to love God in all His Manifestations. To love one's friends is human love, but to love one's enemies is divine. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The kinder and more intelligent a person is, the more kindness he can find in other people. Kindness enriches our life; with kindness mysterious things become clear, difficult things become easy and dull things become cheerful. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But what can I do?' - I answer those who speak thus. - ' ... must I therefore not point out the evil which I clearly, unquestionably see? -- Leo Tolstoy
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Her face was brilliant and glowing; but this glow was not one of brightness; it suggested the fearful glow of a conflagration in the midst of a dark night. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There is no significant idea which cannot be explained to an intelligent twelve year old boy in fifteen minutes. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I do not live when I loose belief in the existence of God. I should long ago have killed myself had I not had a dim hope of finding Him. I live really live only when I feel him and seek Him -- Leo Tolstoy
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There was no deceiving himself: something terrible, new, and more important than anything before in his life, was taking place within him of which he alone was aware. -- Leo Tolstoy
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That day, at that hour, there took place in her heart a complete severance from all her old life, and a quite different, new, utterly strange life had begun for her, -- Leo Tolstoy
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Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Man discovers truth by reason only, not by faith. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the ordinary conditions of life; they were loop-holes, as it were, in that ordinary life through which there came glimpses of something sublime. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Men need only trust in Christ's teaching and obey it, and there will be peace on earth. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All the ordinary circumstances of life, without which nothing could be imagined, ceased to exist for Levin. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It is easier to produce ten volumes of philosophical writings than to put one principle into practice. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days. The children ran wild all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper, and wrote -- Leo Tolstoy
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The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby justifies, in a way, all similar actions that lie outside those limits. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It is not enough to be a hardworking person. Think: what do you work at? -- Leo Tolstoy
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Has been argued with some justification that it is Anna's growing sense of bleak isolation that is the essence of her tragedy. There -- Leo Tolstoy
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There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes. -- Leo Tolstoy
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War is the most painful act of subjection to the laws of God that can be required of the human will. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The way to do away with war is for those who do not want war, who regard participation in it a sin, to refrain from fighting. -- Leo Tolstoy
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What is War and Peace? It is not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less an historical chronicle. War and Peace is what the author wished and was able to express in the form in which it is expressed. Such -- Leo Tolstoy
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It was all so strange, so unlike what he had been looking forward to. -- Leo Tolstoy
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On the twelfth of June, the forces of Western Europe crossed the borders of Russia, and war began
that is, an event took place contrary to human reason and to the whole of human nature. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Those are the men,' added Bolkonsky with a sigh which he could not suppress, as they went out of the palace, 'those are the men who decide the fate of nations. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Send anyone who preaches war to a special frontline legion -into the assault, into the attack, ahead of everyone. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And so there was no single cause for war, but it happened simply because it had to happen -- Leo Tolstoy
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What a terrible thing war is, what a terrible thing! -- Leo Tolstoy
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To abolish war it is necessary to abolish patriotism, and to abolish patriotism it is necessary first to understand that it is an evil. Tell people that patriotism is bad and most will reply, 'Yes, bad patriotism is bad, but mine is good patriotism.' -- Leo Tolstoy
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APPENDIX SOME WORDS ABOUT WAR AND PEACE (Published in Russian Archive, 1868) -- Leo Tolstoy
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And once he had seen this, he could never again see it otherwise, just as we cannot reconstruct an illusion once it has been explained. -- Leo Tolstoy
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On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature. -- Leo Tolstoy
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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
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A moment ago, and how close she had been to him, of what
importance in his life! And how aloof and remote from him she
had become now!
"It was bound to be so," he said, not looking at her. -- Leo Tolstoy
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One is ashamed to say how little is needed for all men to be delivered from those calamities which now oppress them; it is only needful not to lie. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Amid the scattered property and the crowd on the open space, she in her rich satin cloak with a bright lilac shawl on her head suggested a delicate exotic plant thrown out onto the snow. She -- Leo Tolstoy
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How can he talk like that? thought Pierre. He considered his friend a model of perfection because Prince Andrew possessed in the highest degree just the very qualities Pierre lacked, and which might be best described as strength of will. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In the service, especially in the complicated situation such as this, it is difficult not to say impossible, to follow any one straight path without risking mistakes and without accepting
responsibility, but once a path seems to be the right one I must follow it, happen what may. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Am I mad, to see what others do not see, or are they mad who are responsible for all that I am seeing? -- Leo Tolstoy
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The best thoughts most often come in the morning after waking, while still in bed or while walking. -- Leo Tolstoy
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She was, every time she saw him, making the picture of him in her imagination (incomparably superior, impossible in reality) fit with him as he really was -- Leo Tolstoy
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I can't live except by my own heart. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We should show life neither as it is or as it ought to be, but only as we see it in our dreams. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Why do you need to be like anyone? You're good as you are, -- Leo Tolstoy
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All is vanity, all is delusion, except those infinite heavens. -- Leo Tolstoy
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As is so often the case, was not so much annoyed at the fact itself as at the way in which he had met his wife's words. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Pierre was for the first time at this meeting impressed by the endless multiplicity of men's minds, which leads to no truth being ever seen by two persons alike ... What Pierre chiefly desired was always to transmit his thought to another exactly as he conceived it himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But it is Tolstoy's understanding of life that the fate of each man and woman is determined by forces beyond their control; these forces include the dictatorship of social demands. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Woman, don't you know, is such a subject that however much you study it, it's always perfectly new. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There is trouble with a wife, but it's even worse with a woman who is not a wife. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, that's like supposing the same candle could last you all your life -- Leo Tolstoy
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Woman is more impressionable than man. Therefore in the Golden Age they were better than men. Now they are worse. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart, as though it were a fresh wound he had only just received. But he was at home, and at home the very walls are a support. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Rivers are places that renew our spirit, connect us with our past, and link us directly with the flow and rhythm of the natural world. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All's over, and there's nothing more," said Dolly. "And the worst of it all is, you see, that I can't cast him off: there are the children, I am tied. And I can't live with him! It's torture to see him. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He had lived (without being aware of it) on those spiritual truths that he had sucked in with his mother's milk, but he had thought, not merely without recognition of these truths, but studiously ignoring them. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The aim of civilization is to enable us to get enjoyment out of everything. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In every man, there were two beings: one the spiritual, seeking only that kind of happiness for him self which should tend towards the happiness of all; the other, the animal man, seeking only his own happiness, and ready to sacrifice to it the happiness of the rest of the world. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Pure, perfect sorrow is as impossible as pure and perfect joy. -- Leo Tolstoy
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History, that is to say, the unconscious, universal life of humanity, in the aggregate, every moment profits by the life of kings for itself, as an instrument for the accomplishment of its own ends. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Things always go quicker with two working at it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There is no genius where there is not simplicity. -- Leo Tolstoy
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India, which is the nursery of the great faiths of the world -- Leo Tolstoy
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If religion is the establishing of a relationship between man and the universe, then morality is the explanation of those activities that automatically result when a person maintains a relationship to the universe. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In time, things fall its places for a man who know how to wait -- Leo Tolstoy
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If string isn't tight and you try to break it, it's very hard to do. But tighten it to the utmost and put just the weight of your finger on it, and it will break. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Darkness had fallen upon everything for him; but just because of this darkness he felt that the one guiding clue in the darkness was his work, and he clutched it and clung to it with all his strength. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I have to create a circle of reading for myself: Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal, The New Testament. This is also necessary for all people. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If you can forgive me, forgive
me,' said her eyes, 'I am so happy.'
'I hate them all, and you, and myself,' his eyes
responded. -- Leo Tolstoy
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To accept the dignity of another person is an axiom. It has nothing to do with subduing, supporting, or giving charity to other people. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I have often remarked that it is hardest of all to live with people who are untruthful and insincere. I can endure anything except that. -- Leo Tolstoy
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You owe forty-three thousand, Count,' said Dolokhov, and stretching himself he rose from the table. 'One does get tired sitting so long,' he added. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All is over ... I have nothing but you, remember that."
"I can never forget what is my whole life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The day before yesterday I spent the night at Arzamas and something extraordinary happened to me. It was 2 o'clock in the morning. I was terribly tired, I wanted to go to sleep and I felt perfectly well. But -- Leo Tolstoy
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villeins; and we have labour paid in kind, and leaseholders, -- Leo Tolstoy
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Humanity unceasingly strives forward from a lower, more partial and obscure understanding of life to one more general and more lucid. -- Leo Tolstoy
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but my life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!' The -- Leo Tolstoy
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Power, from the standpoint of experience, is merely the relation that exists between the expression of someone's will and the execution of that will by others. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I have learned that men live not by selfishness, but by love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Vengeance is mine, I will repay -- Leo Tolstoy
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But our idea is that the wolves should be fed and the sheep kept safe. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Religious people are guided in their activities not by the consequences of their actions, but by the consciousness of the destination of their lives. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The stars, as if knowing that no one was looking at them, began to disport themselves in the dark sky: now flaring up, now vanishing, now trembling, they were busy whispering something gladsome and mysterious to one another. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no wars, he said. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If the thought ever comes to you that everything that you have thought about God is mistaken and that there is no God, do not be dismayed. It happens to many people. But do not think that the source of your unbelief is that there is no God. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Reason gives expression to the laws of inevitability. Consciousness gives expression to the essence of freedom. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Mathematics is the queen of disciplines ... it will drive the nonsense out of your head! -- Leo Tolstoy
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I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; -- Leo Tolstoy
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The more respect that different objects, customs, or laws are given, the more attentively you have to question the right these things have to this respect. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The public declaration and confession of Orthodoxy is usually encountered among dull-witted, cruel and immoral people who tend to consider themselves very important. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Countess Bezukhova was present among other Russian ladies who had followed the sovereign from Petersburg to Vilna, and eclipsed the refined Polish ladies by her massive, so-called Russian, type of beauty. The Emperor noticed her, and honoured her with a dance. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Now she knew all of them as people know one another in a country town; she knew their habits and weaknesses, and where the shoe pinched each one of them. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The recognition of the sanctity of the life of every man is the first and only basis of all morality. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And where love ends, hate begins -- Leo Tolstoy
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I've lost my heart to you. -- Leo Tolstoy
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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. -- Leo Tolstoy
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[To understand all is to forgive all]. Think -- Leo Tolstoy
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So that's what it is!" he suddenly exclaimed aloud. "What joy! -- Leo Tolstoy
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But that what was for him the greatest and most cruel injustice appeared to others a quite ordinary occurrence. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Meanwhile spring arrived. My old dejection passed away and gave place to the unrest which spring brings with it, full of dreams and vague hopes and desires. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Upon meeting, you're judged by your clothes, upon parting you're judged by your wits. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I think the motive force of all our action is, after all, personal happiness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It was one of those things that one knows but cannot even tell oneself - so dreadful and shameful it would be to be mistaken. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He entered his wife's drawing-room as one enters a theatre, was acquainted with everybody, equally pleased to see everyone and equally indifferent to them all. -- Leo Tolstoy
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without having to consider to what class they belonged. They all belonged to human race which without his thinking about it, all appeared
dear to Olenin and they all treated him in a friendly manner way. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Anna smiled,as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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And new conditions of existence will spring up, to which other men will grow just as accustomed, and I shall not know about them, for I shall be no more! -- Leo Tolstoy
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She felt that the diving image of Mme Stahl that she had carried in her soul for a whole month had vanished irretrievably ... And by no effort of imagination could she bring back the former Mme Stahl. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Teach French and unteach sincerity. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We live in this world like a child who enters a room where a clever person is speaking. The child did not hear the beginning of the speech, and he leaves before the end; and there are certain things which he hears but does not understand -- Leo Tolstoy
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To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Men who want to fight will always put themselves in the most advantageous conditions for fighting. The -- Leo Tolstoy
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Prince Andrei was one of the best dancers of his day. Natasha danced exquisitely. Her little feet in their satin dancing shoes performed their role swiftly, lightly, as if they had wings, while her face was radiant and ecstatic with happiness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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No sort of activity is likely to be lasting if it is not founded on self-interest, that's a universal principle, a philosophical principle -- Leo Tolstoy
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To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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For a few seconds they looked silently into each other's eyes, and the distant and impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The spirit of an army is the factor which multiplied by the mass gives the resulting force. To define and express the significance of this unknown factor - the spirit of an army - is a problem for science. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If we allow that human life can be governed by reason, the possibility of life is annihilated -- Leo Tolstoy
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To Konstantin Levin the country was good first because it afforded a field for labor, of the usefulness of which there could be no doubt. To Sergey Ivanovitch the country was particularly good, because there it was possible and fitting to do nothing. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Each believed that the life he himself led was the only real life and the life led by his friend was nothing but an illusion. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All this was clear to me, and I was glad and at peace. Then it is as if someone is saying to me, "See that you remember." And I awoke. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The countess in turn, without omitting her duties as hostess, threw significant glances from behind the pineapples at her husband whose face and bald head seemed by their redness to contrast more than usual with his gray hair. At -- Leo Tolstoy
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If you get a hard word from any one, keep silent, and his own conscience will accuse him. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life which is the more free the more abstract it's interests, and his elemental swarm-life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him -- Leo Tolstoy
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Moscow was burned by its citizens
that is true; not, however by the citizens who remained, but by those that went away. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If Mormonism is able to endure, unmodified, until it reaches the third and fourth generation, it is destined to become the greatest power the world has ever known. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Without Greek studies there is no education. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Always wetweating-always wetweating! -- Leo Tolstoy
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Maybe its because i rejoice over what i have and don't grieve over what i don't have. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Society, and proceeded to introduce a series of sweeping social, economic, and political reforms, including -- Leo Tolstoy
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Between the murder of an animal and the murder of a man, there's no more than ONE step! -- Leo Tolstoy
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The truth is obtained like gold, not by letting it grow bigger, but by washing off from it everything that isn't gold -- Leo Tolstoy
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I asked: 'What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause, and space?' And I replied to quite another question: 'What is the meaning of my life within time, cause, and space?' With the result that, after long efforts of thought, the answer I reached was: 'None'. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He was always in a hurry to get where he was not. -- Leo Tolstoy
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What energy!' I thought. 'Man has conquered everything, and destroyed millions of plants, yet this one won't submit. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All this mental illness of our occurred simply bc we lived immorally. We suffered from our immoral life, to smother our suffering we committed various abnormal acts.
I disliked him, bc I understood that he was a dirty adulterer. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In affirming my belief in Christ's teaching, I could not help explaining why I do not believe, and consider as mistaken, the Church's doctrine, which is usually called Christianity. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Kings are the slaves of history. History, that is, the unconscious, swarmlike life of mankind, uses every moment of a king's life as an instrument for its purposes. -- Leo Tolstoy
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What is important is not the quantity of your knowledge but its quality. You can know many things without knowing the most important. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I prefer a good pair of boots to Shakespeare. -- Leo Tolstoy
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An artist is one of two things: he is either a high priest, or a more or less smart entertainer. - GIUSEPPE MAZZINI -- Leo Tolstoy
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Do not the figures make it clear that not the English, but the Indians, have enslaved themselves?' One -- Leo Tolstoy
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I'm afraid I'm becoming ridiculous. -- Leo Tolstoy
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she smiled at him, and at her own fears. -- Leo Tolstoy
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As when a window is opened a whiff of fresh air from the fields enters a stuffy room, so a whiff of youthfulness, energy, and confidence of success reached Kutuzov's cheerless staff with the galloping advent of all these brilliant young men. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Ah, if everyone was as sensitive as you! There's no girl who hasn't gone through that. And it's all so unimportant! -- Leo Tolstoy
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How am I? If we grumble at sickness, God won't grant us death,' replied Platon, and at once resumed the story he had begun. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And the light by which she had been reading the book of life, blazed up suddenly, illuminating those pages that had been dark, then flickered, grew dim. and went out forever. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Eating meat is a leftover of the greatest brutality [killing]; the transition to vegetarianism is the first and most natural consequence of enlightenment. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He felt that the world that have been shattered was once more stern to life and his soul, and new beauty and a new and steadfast foundations. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Never did Christ utter a single word attesting to a personal resurrection and a life beyond the grave. -- Leo Tolstoy
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History would be an excellent thing if only it were true. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I have the honor to report, sir, that only eight rounds are left. Are we to continue firing?" he asked. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It would be a sin to help you destroy yourself. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When you seek God with your intellect and your actions, God exists in you, and as soon as you decide that you have found God, and stop and become satisfied, you have lost him. - FYODOR STRAKHOV -- Leo Tolstoy
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Those who don't believe in the spiritual foundations of their faith, who only pay lip service to the outer shell of their religious rituals, cannot be tolerant of others. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It's like scarlet fever: one has to get it over."
"Then one should invent a way of inoculating love, like vaccination. -- Leo Tolstoy
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John Dewey was right that "failure is instructive," then Tolstoy's life is, well, an instructional gold mine. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Above him was a clear blue sky, and the sun's vast orb quivered like a huge hollow, crimson float on the surface of that milky sea of mist. -- Leo Tolstoy
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A wife's a worry, a non-wife's even worse. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Wealth is a great sin in the eyes of God. Poverty is a great sin in the eyes of man. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I ... having filled my life with the spiritual blessings Christianity gave me, brimful of these blessings and living by them, I, like a child, not understanding them, destroy them
that is, I wish to destroy that by which I live. -- Leo Tolstoy
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No matter how old or how sick you are, how much or little you have done, your business in life not only isn't finished, but hasn't yet received its final, decisive meaning until your very last breath. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The most mentally deranged people are certainly those who see in others indications of insanity they do not notice in themselves. -- Leo Tolstoy
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To me you are detestable, disgusting - a stranger, yes, a perfect stranger!' She uttered that word stranger, so terrible to herself, with anguish and hatred. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Do not seek quiet and rest in those earthly realms where delusions and desires are engendered, for if thou dost, thou wilt be dragged through the rough wilderness of life, which is far from Me. -- Leo Tolstoy
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For him all the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class - all the girls in the world except her, and those girls with all sorts of human weaknesses, and very ordinary girls: the other class - she alone, having no weaknesses of any sort and higher than all humanity. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Grow spiritually and help others to do so. It is the meaning of life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Both salvation and punishment for man lie in the fact that if he lives wrongly he can befog himself so as not to see the misery of his position. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Whatever our destiny is or may be, we have made it ourselves, and we do not complain of it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Now every time he turned to her, he bent his head, as though he would have fallen at her feet, and in his eyes there was nothing but humble submission and dread. 'I would not offend you' his eyes seemed every time to be saying, 'but I want to save myself, and I don't know how. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The key to success in life is using the good thoughts of wise people. -- Leo Tolstoy
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So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and for what purpose he had been placed in the word. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Improve your kindness by exercising your intellect, and improve your intellect by exercising your kindness and love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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History is the product of vast, amorphous and indecipherable social movements. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All the cruellest words a coarse man could say, he said to her in her imagination, and she could not forgive him for them, as if he had actually said them to her. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning and cruelty. -- Leo Tolstoy
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She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Without the support from religion
remember, we talked about it
no father, using only his own resources, would be able to bring up a child. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Nice passion is reading -- Leo Tolstoy
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There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Russia alone is to be the savior of Europe. -- Leo Tolstoy
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His director told him, as material food was necessary for the body life, spiritual food is necessary for spiritual life. This was result of his consciousness of humility, certainty that whatever he had to do was right. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Art is a microscope which the artist fixes on the secrets of his soul, and shows to people these secrets which are common to all. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Love hinders death. Love is life. Anything at all that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is - everything exists - only because I love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The subject of history is the life of peoples and mankind. -- Leo Tolstoy
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How can one be well...when one suffers morally? -- Leo Tolstoy
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He now often remembered his conversation with Prince Andrew and quite agreed with him, though he understood Prince Andrew's thoughts somewhat differently. Prince Andrew had thought and said that happiness could only be negative, but had said it with a shade of bitterness and irony -- Leo Tolstoy
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These stupid chignons! There's no getting at the real daughter. One simply strokes the bristles of dead women. -- Leo Tolstoy
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During this journey it was as if he again thought over his whole life and reached the same old comforting and hopeless conclusion: that there was no need for him to start anything, that he had to live out his life without doing evil, without anxiety, and without wishing for anything. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Every man and every living creature has a sacred right to the gladness of springtime. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It was as if that lofty infinite canopy of heaven that had once towered above him had suddenly turned into a low solid vault that weighed him down, in which all was clear, but nothing eternal or mysterious. -- Leo Tolstoy
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My poor husband is enduring pains and hunger in Jewish taverns, but the news which I have inspires me yet more. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Since corrupt people unite amongst themselves to constitute a force, then honest people must do the same. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Life did not stop, and one had to live. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The kinder and more thoughtful a person is, the more kindness they can find in other people. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It's bad to be unable to stand solitude. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We shall not be afraid of their terror. Our confidence is in the Lord Almighty and not in man. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Hell is the inability to love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Where the legs have gone the hind legs must follow -- Leo Tolstoy
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No one alone can attain truth. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When ignorance does not know something, it says that what it does not know is stupid. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Some mathematician has said that enjoyment lies in the search for truth, not in the finding it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When I have one foot in the grave, I will tell the whole truth about women. I shall tell it, jump into my coffin, pull the lid over me and say, "Do what you like now." -- Leo Tolstoy
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It is pride that makes error and discord among men. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect. -- Leo Tolstoy
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...the assertion that you live in a lie while I live in the truth is the most cruel thing one person can say to another... -- Leo Tolstoy
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A king is history's slave. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver! -- Leo Tolstoy
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But my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Her glance, the touch of her hand, set him aflame. He kissed the palm of his hand where she had touched it, and went home, happy in the sense that he had got nearer to the attainment of his aims that evening ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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Let fear once get possession of the soul, and it does not readily yield its place to another sentiment.
Sebastopol by Leo Tolstoy -- Leo Tolstoy
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The idea shared by many that life is a vale of tears is just as false as the idea shared by the great majority, the idea to which youth and health and riches incline you, that life is a place of entertainment. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Here I am ... wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end
that there is such a thing as death. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Good fiction doesn't come out of the basic conflict of good versus bad. Instead, it comes out of a conflict between good and good. -- Leo Tolstoy
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You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom. -- Leo Tolstoy
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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 Tolstoy
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No one can attain to truth by himself. Only by laying stone on stone with the cooperation of all, by the millions of generations from our forefather Adam to our own times, is that temple reared which is to be a worthy dwelling place of the Great God. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We should always try to find those things which do not separate us from other people but which unite us. To work against each other, to be angry and turn your back on each other, is to work against nature. - MARCUS AURELIUS -- Leo Tolstoy
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I can't understand how anyone can write without rewriting everything over and over again. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In education, once more, the chief things are equality and freedom. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We expect rewards for goodness, and punishments for the bad things which we do. Often, they are not immediately -- Leo Tolstoy
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away again.' 'You are quite right,' said the Chief. 'We will make it over -- Leo Tolstoy
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Lay me down like a stone oh God, and raise me up like a new bread. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Each time of life has its own kind of love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When you feel depressed - have a cigarette or a drink or, best of all, make love, and it will pass. -- Leo Tolstoy
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To speak of it would be giving importance to something that has none. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Not all of life's roads are set fast, for a man may do this or a man may do that and not even the gods know the mind of a man. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be. -Dolly -- Leo Tolstoy
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To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I believe in one, incomprehensible God, the immortality of the soul and eternal retribution for our acts. -- Leo Tolstoy
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She was one of those creatures which seem only not to speak because the mechanism of their mouth does not allow them to. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Power is the relation of a given person to other persons, in which the more this person expresses opinions, theories and justifications of the collective action the less is his participation in that action. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal - that there is no human relation between master and slave. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Every man was conscious of his own insignificance, aware that he was but a grain of sand in that ocean of humanity, and yet at the same time had a sense of power as a part of that vast whole. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I have discovered nothing new; I have only perceived what I already knew. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He looked intently and inquiringly into his friend's eyes, evidently trying in vain to find the answer to some question. -- Leo Tolstoy
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She stood with her slender arms hanging down, her scarcely defined bosom rising and falling regularly, and with bated breath and glittering, frightened eyes gazed straight before her, evidently prepared for the height of joy or misery. She -- Leo Tolstoy
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I believe that the reason of life is for each of us simply to grow in love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be sure whether what he said was very witty or very stupid. -- Leo Tolstoy
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At times he would become so absorbed in reading, that all the kerosene in the lamp would burn out, and still he could not tear himself away. And so Avdyeitch used to read every evening. -- Leo Tolstoy
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One may say with one's lips: 'I believe that God is one, and also three' - but no one can believe it, because the words have no sense. -- Leo Tolstoy
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You need feeling, emotion, to create. You can't create out of indifference. -- Leo Tolstoy
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No, bwother, I have gwown moustaches myself, -- Leo Tolstoy
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Be tempted by so easy a way of ending my life. I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it. And all this befell -- Leo Tolstoy
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He was not to blame for being born with an irrepressible charachter and a mind some how constrained. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Before, when I was ordered to consider him intelligent, I kept on trying to and I considered myself stupid for not seeing how intelligent he was; but the moment I said, "he's stupid," but said it in a whisper, everything became quite clear. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He was in a full possession of facile, refined and agreeable intellect which he used to maintain his power and strengthen and increase his popularity. -- Leo Tolstoy
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They were waiting for Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, known in society as le terrible dragon, a lady celebrated not for her wealth or distinction, but for her straightforward speech and the frank simplicity of her manners. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He had the unfortunate capacity many men, especially Russians, have of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to be able to take a serious part in it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He had the unlucky capacity many men have of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to take any serious part in it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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One must do one of two tings: either admit that the existing order of society is just, and then stick up for one's rights in it;or acknowledge that you are enjoying unjust privileges, as i do, and then enjoy them and be satisfied. -- Leo Tolstoy
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You will die and it will all be over. You will die and find out everything or cease asking. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The ideal is within you, and the obstacle to reaching this ideal is also within you. You already possess all the material from which to create your ideal self. - THOMAS CARLYLE -- Leo Tolstoy
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Is it possible to say what one really feels? -- Leo Tolstoy
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He who has a mistaken idea of life, will always have a mistaken idea of death. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We sin so much, we deceive so much, and all for what? I'm over fifty, my friend ... I'll ... Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible. He -- Leo Tolstoy
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The highest wisdom and truth are like the purest liquid we may wish to imbibe,' he said. 'Can I receive that pure liquid into an impure vessel and judge of its purity? Only by the inner purification of myself can I retain in some degree of purity the liquid I receive. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He saw that the inmost recesses of her soul, that had always hitherto lain open before him, were closed against him. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Without knowing who I am and why I'm here it is impossible to live. Yet I cannot know that and therefore I cannot live -- Leo Tolstoy
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For the general good, he could not stop short for the sake of one man's life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There is nothing, nothing certain but the nothingness of all that is comprehensible to us, and the grandeur of something incomprehensible, but more important! -- Leo Tolstoy
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My life had come to a sudden stop. I was able to breathe, to eat, to drink, to sleep. I could not, indeed help doing so; but there was no real life in me. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But live while you live, tomorrow you die ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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They wept because they were friends, and because they were kindhearted, and because they - friends from childhood - had to think about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over. . . -- Leo Tolstoy
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There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We will never arrive to the notion of total freedom, that is, the absence of cause -- Leo Tolstoy
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When you feel the desire for power, you should stay in solitude for some time -- Leo Tolstoy
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If you look for perfection, you'll never be content. -- Leo Tolstoy
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What am I? And where am I? And why am I here? -- Leo Tolstoy
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Just as one candle lights another and can light thousands of other candles, so one heart illuminates another heart and can illuminate thousands of other hearts. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Well, what should I have done? Counted every tree?" "Of course, they must be counted. You didn't count them, but Ryabinin did. Ryabinin's children will have means of livelihood and education, while yours maybe will not! -- Leo Tolstoy
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Levin suddenly blushed, not as grown men blush, slightly, without being themselves aware of it, but as boys blush, feeling that they are ridiculous through their shyness, -- Leo Tolstoy
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With friends, one is well; but at home, one is better. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Life could be limitless joy, if we would only take it for what it is, in the way it is given to us. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The example of a syllogism that he had studied in Kiesewetter's logic: Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal, had throughout his whole life seemed to him right only in relation to Caius, but not to him at all. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Go take the mother's soul, and learn three truths: Learn What dwells in man, What is not given to man , and What men live by . When thou hast learnt these things, thou shalt return to heaven. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I consider jealousy to be insulting to you and degrading to me. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If we would only testify to the truth as we see it, it would turn out that there are hundreds, thousands, even millions of other people just as we are, who see the truth as we do ... and are only waiting, again as we are, for someone to proclaim it. The Kingdom of God is within you. -- Leo Tolstoy
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She was as easy to recognize in that crowd as a rose among nettles. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Sight-seeing, aside from the fact that everything had been seen already, could not have for him
and intelligent Russian
the inexplicable importance attached to it by the English. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The dog gave the meat to the ass and the ass gave hay to the dog and both went hungry -- Leo Tolstoy
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When starting on a journey or changing their mode of life, men capable of reflection are generally in a serious frame of mind. At such moments one reviews the past and plans for the future. Prince -- Leo Tolstoy
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Our whole life is taken up with anxiety for personal security, with preparations for living, so that we really never live at all. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If there was a reason why he preferred the liberal tendency to the conservative one (also held to by many of his circle), it was not because he found the liberal tendency more sensible, but it more closely suited his manner of life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little trouble? -- Leo Tolstoy
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Both the countess and Sonya understood that, naturally, neither Moscow, nor the burning of Moscow, nor anything else, could seem of importance to Natasha. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Whether he is better or worse off there where he awoke after his death, disappointed, or found there what he expected we shall all soon learn. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I did not expect this of you,' said the staff-captain seriously and severely. 'You don't wish to apologize, young sir, but it's not only to him but to the whole regiment - all of us - you're to blame all around. The -- Leo Tolstoy
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What is precious is not the reward but the work. And I wish you to understand that. If you work and study in order to get a reward, the work will seem hard to you; but when you work, if you love the work, you will find your reward in that. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Some mathematician, I believe, has said that true pleasure lies not in the discovery of truth, but in the search for it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Death destroys the body, as the scaffolding is destroyed after the building is up and finished. And he whose building is up rejoices at the destruction of the scaffolding and of the body. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He felt that all his hitherto dissipated and dispersed forces were gathered and directed with terrible energy towards one blissful goal. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold. -- Leo Tolstoy
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As often happens with passionate people, he was mastered by anger but was still seeking an object on which to vent it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing but that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God!... -- Leo Tolstoy
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All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow. -- Leo Tolstoy
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She did worse than break the law, she broke the rules -- Leo Tolstoy
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The most important and necessary human deed, for both doer and recipient, are those of which he does not see the results. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The idea of beauty is the fundamental idea of everything. In the world we see only distortions of the fundamental idea, but art, by imagination, may lift itself to the height of this idea. Art is therefore akin to creation. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The most important knowledge is that which guides the way you lead your life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Let me give you a piece of advice: Leo Tolstoy is not the only human being on this planet. Yet all I ever hear you talking about is Leo Tolstoy ...
(tr Benjamin Sher) -- Leo Tolstoy
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What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The Kingdom of God is Within You, which in turn influenced such twentieth-century figures -- Leo Tolstoy
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A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Is he aiming at doing anything, or simply undoing what's been done? It's the great misfortune of our government - this paper administration, of which he's a worthy representative. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It is the work and not the reward that is precious. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels? -- Leo Tolstoy
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Art can compel people freely, gladly, and spontaneously to sacrifice themselves in the service of man. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And what will be there, and what has there been here? Why was I so reluctant to part with life? There was something in this life I did not and do not understand. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Salvation does not lie in the rituals and profession of faith, but in a lucid understanding of the meaning of one's life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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These joys were so trifling as to be as imperceptible as grains of gold among the sand, and in moments of depression she saw nothing but the sand; yet there were brighter moments when she felt nothing but joy, saw nothing but the gold. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Those joys were so small that they passed unnoticed, like gold in sand, and at bad moments she could see nothing but the pain, nothing but sand; but there were good moments too when she saw nothing but the joy, nothing but gold. -- Leo Tolstoy
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You went with the mother and came back with the son, -- Leo Tolstoy
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They've got no idea what happiness is, they don't know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us
there is no life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Read less, study less, but think more -- Leo Tolstoy
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For which cause a man will leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife, and the two shall be one flesh', -- Leo Tolstoy
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If there is something great in you, it will not appear on your first call. It will not appear and come to you easily, without any work and effort. - RALPH WALDO EMERSON -- Leo Tolstoy
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It is a harmful feeling, because it disturbs advantageous and joyous, peaceful relations with other peoples, and above all produces that governmental organization under which power may fall, and does fall, into the, hands of the worst men. -- Leo Tolstoy
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[Pierre] involuntarily started comparing these two men, so different and at the same time so similar, because of the love he had for both of them, and because both had lived and both had died. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Reason is often the slave of sin; it strives to justify it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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God is the same everywhere. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He felt that the world that had been shattered was once more stirring to life in his soul, in new beauty and on new and steadfast foundations. -- Leo Tolstoy
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History, that is, the unconscious, common, swarm life of mankind uses every moment of the life of kings as an instrument for its own ends -- Leo Tolstoy
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Real science studies and makes accessible that knowledge which people at that period of history think important, and real art transfers this truth from the domain of knowledge to the domain of feelings. -- Leo Tolstoy
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This history of culture will explain to us the motives, the conditions of life, and the thought of the writer or reformer. -- Leo Tolstoy
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as is done by the newest historians, we shall have the history of monarchs and writers, but not the history of the life of the peoples. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All the true heroes of history will be forgotten and all the villains will be remembered as heroes. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The epitaph that I would write for history would say: I conceal nothing. It is not enough not to lie. One should strive not to lie in a negative sense by remaining silent. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If every man could act as he chose, the whole of history would be a tissue of disconnected accidents. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When joy disappears, look for your mistake -- Leo Tolstoy
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Women, especially those who have passed through the school of marriage, know very well that conversations upon elevated subjects are only conversations, and that man seeks and desires the body and all that ornaments the body. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it."

- Vronksy {Anna Karenina} -- Leo Tolstoy
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The ancients have left us model heroic poems in which the heroes furnish the whole interest of the story, and we are still unable to accustom ourselves to the fact that for our epoch histories of that kind are meaningless. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But that's the whole aim of civilization: to make everything a source of enjoyment. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Everything depends on upbringing. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Pestsov maintained that art is one, and that it can attai its highest mainfestation only in conjunction with all kinds of art. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In difficult circumstances always act on first impressions. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It was better not to remember such terrible details. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But he immediately recalled his promise to Prince Andrew not to go there. Then, as happens to people of weak character, he desired so passionately once more to enjoy that dissipation he was so accustomed to that he decided to go. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There are always so many conjectures as to the issue of any event that, whatever the outcome, there will always be people to say: 'I said then that it would be so' -- Leo Tolstoy
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Governments not only are not necessary, but are harmful and most highly immoral institutions. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Nekhludoff laughed as he compared himself to the ass in the fable who, while deciding which of the two bales of hay before him he should have his meal from, starved himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Chance created the situation; genius made use of it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any man take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also, -- Leo Tolstoy
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The struggle for existence and hatred are the only things that unite people. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The most solemn mystery in the world continued -- Leo Tolstoy
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Unhasting and unresting' was his motto -- Leo Tolstoy
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Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and truth. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Under the influence of music, it seems that I feel what I do not really feel, that I understand what I do not understand, that I do what I cannot do. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Many people have ideas on how others should change; few people have ideas on how they should change. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Gaiety and grief and despair and tenderness and triumph followed one another without any connection, like the emotions of a madman. And those emotions, like a madman's, sprang up quite unexpectedly. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Kitty looked into his face, which was so close to her own, and long afterwards - for several years after - that look, full of love, to which he made no response, cut her to the heart with an agony of shame. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Pierre held the hand of his betrothed in silence, looking at her beautiful bosom as it rose and fell. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Il ne faut jamais rien outrer: One must do nothing in excess -- Leo Tolstoy
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I am obliged to renounce violence, and abstain from it altogether. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I have learned what must be, and therefore have come to see the whole horror of what is. -- Leo Tolstoy
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One may deal with things without love ... but you cannot deal with men without it ... It cannot be otherwise, because natural love is the fundamental law of human life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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As long as there are slaughter houses there will always be battlefields. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It all depends with how much judgment and knowledge the thing's done. -- Leo Tolstoy
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there is nothing stronger than those two: patience and time, they -- Leo Tolstoy
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He did what heroes do after their work is accomplished; he died. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are absent -- Leo Tolstoy
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He felt like a man who, after straining his eyes to peer into the remote distance, finds what he was seeking at his very feet. All his life he had been looking over the heads of those around him, while he had only to look before him without straining his eyes. p 1320 -- Leo Tolstoy
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People jump back and forth in pursuit of pleasures only because they see the emptiness of their lives more clearly than they do the emptiness of whichever new entertainment attracts them -- Leo Tolstoy
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He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Men never understand what honor is, though they're always talking about it -- Leo Tolstoy
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Kostia: When I'm mowing, I don't ask myself why I'm here.
Theodore: You're here to be Master, Konstantin Dmitrievich.
As it's always been, by the grace of God -- Leo Tolstoy
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Pierre, who knew she was very stupid, sometimes attended, with a strange feeling of perplexity and fear, her evenings and dinner parties, where politics, poetry, and philosophy were discussed. At -- Leo Tolstoy
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I feel not only that I cannot disappear, as nothing disappears in the world, but that I will always be and have always been. I feel that, besides me, above me, spirits live, and that in this world there is truth. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Man is meant for happiness and this happiness is in him, in the satisfaction of the daily needs of his existence. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When you say, 'I can't do that,' you're expressing yourself incorrectly. You should say, 'I couldn't do that before.' -- Leo Tolstoy
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The most important acts, both for the one who accomplishes them and for his fellow creatures, are those that have remote consequences. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When I doubted, there was hope; but now there is no hope and even so I doubt everything. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I was afraid of life and strove against it, yet I still hoped for something from it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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By digging into our souls, we often dig up what might better have remained there unnoticed.
Alexis Alexandrovich -- Leo Tolstoy
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For the attainment of blessedness, a law has been given to humanity which it should fulfill. The law is that of the union of mankind. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The military world is characterized by the absence of freedom - in other words, a rigorous discipline-enforced inactivity, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery and drunkenness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one's own flesh in the inkpot, each time one dips one's pen. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Can it be that I have overlooked something, that there is something which I have failed to understand? Is it not possible that this state of despair is common to everyone? -- Leo Tolstoy
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We destroy only because we're spiritually sated. Exactly like children! -- Leo Tolstoy
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If you make it a habit not to blame others, you will feel the growth of the ability to love in your soul, and you will see the growth of goodness in your life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Always the same. Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair rages, and always pain; always pain, always despair, and always the same. When alone he had a dreadful and distressing desire to call someone, but he knew beforehand that with others present it would be still worse. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not understand). -- Leo Tolstoy
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I wish to understand in such a way that everything that is inexplicable shall present itself to me as being necessarily inexplicable, and not as being something I am under an arbitrary obligation to believe. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Send him to the devil, I'm busy. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Influence in society, however, is capital which has to be economized if it is to last. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed in two ways: by a change of life or by a change of conscience. -- Leo Tolstoy
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A new conception of life cannot be imposed on men; it can only be freely assimilated. And it can only be freely assimilated in two ways: one spiritual and internal, the other experimental and external. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But I'm married, and believe me, in getting to know thoroughly one's wife, if one loves her, as some one has said, one gets to know all women better than if one knew thousands of them. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He liked fishing and seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It is by those who have suffered that the world has been advanced. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Your whole life should be lived as a heroic deed -- Leo Tolstoy
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We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed in a subject however trivial it may be, and that there is no subject so trivial that it will not grow to infinite proportions if one's entire attention is devoted to it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Energy is based on love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In order not to give myself up to the desire to kill him on the spot, I felt compelled to treat him cordially. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Levin resolved the first question at once, with extraordinary ease, though it had seemed so difficult to him before. -- Leo Tolstoy
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There are only two sources of human vice - idleness and superstition, and only two virtues - activity and intelligence. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Natasha, in her lilac silk dress trimmed with black lace walked, as women can walk, with the more repose and stateliness the greater the pain and shame in her soul. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In all human sorrow nothing gives comfort but love and faith, and that in the sight of Christ's compassion for us no sorrow is trifling. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Prince Hippolyte, under pretense of helping, was in everyone's way. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The very nastiest and coarsest, I can't tell you. It is not grief, not dullness, but much worse. It is as if all that was good in me had hidden itself, and only what is horrid remains. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Everyone sees that this cannot go on. Everything is strained to such a degree that it will certainly break, said Pierre (as those wha examine the actions of any government have always said since governments began). -- Leo Tolstoy
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Something magical has happened to me: like a dream when one feels frightened and creepy, and suddenly wakes up to the knowledge that no such terrors exist. I have wakened up. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And so he who looks down at his feet will not know the truth, but he who discerns by the sun which way to go. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Work is the inevitable condition of human life, the true source of human welfare. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He stepped down, avoiding any long look at her as one avoids long looks at the sun, but seeing her as one sees the sun, without looking. On that day of the week and at -- Leo Tolstoy
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... You conquer me. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening. -- Leo Tolstoy
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How important the concept of God is, and how instead of valuing what has been given us, we with light hearts spurn it because of absurdities that have been attached to it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal. -- Leo Tolstoy
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It would, therefore, seem obvious that patriotism as a feeling is bad and harmful, and as a doctrine is stupid. For it is clear that if each people and each State considers itself the best of peoples and States, they all live in a gross and harmful delusion. -- Leo Tolstoy
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True nonresistance is the one true resistance to evil. It kills and finally destroys the evil sentiment. -- Leo Tolstoy
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No, I can't argue with them; they wear impenetrable armour, while I'm naked. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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It's different for you and me. You study, you become enlightened; I study, I become confused. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Why does man have reason if he can only be influenced by violence? -- Leo Tolstoy
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Prince Vasili took the first opportunity to gain his confidence, flatter him, become intimate with him, -- Leo Tolstoy
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I don't want to prove anything; I merely want to live, to do no one harm but myself. I have the right to do that, haven't I? -- Leo Tolstoy
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Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Prince Andrei shrugged his shoulders and frowned, as lovers of music do when they hear a false note. The -- Leo Tolstoy
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And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We shall all of us die, so why grudge a little trouble? -- Leo Tolstoy
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While I doubted, I had hope; but now there is no hope left and all the same I doubt everything. -- Leo Tolstoy
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True life is lived when tiny changes occur. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Knowledge is real knowledge only when it is acquired by the efforts of your intellect, not by memory -- Leo Tolstoy
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Everything seemed pleasant and easy to Nikolai during the first part of his stay in Voronezh and, as generally happens when a man is in a pleasant state of mind, everything went well and easily. p 1128 -- Leo Tolstoy
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All that exists is One. People only call this One by different names. -- Leo Tolstoy
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What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Everyone wants to change humanity, but no one is willing to change themselves. -- Leo Tolstoy
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How is it possible to reconcile the sense that the universe in which we have been cast has a significance when we are so aware of the jumbled trivia of day-to-day living? How is -- Leo Tolstoy
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have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.' And -- Leo Tolstoy
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He who considers himself Orthodox will not do works of love; only he who considers himself a wrong-doer will do them. And for works of love everything is forgiven. And -- Leo Tolstoy
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Intriguing people have to invent a noxious, dangerous party ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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Religion reveals the meaning of life, and science only applies this meaning to the course of circumstances. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Anything is better than lies and deceit! -- Leo Tolstoy
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there is and can be no beginning to any event, for one event always flows uninterruptedly from another. The -- Leo Tolstoy
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The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But the peasants - how do the peasants die? -- Leo Tolstoy
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In the midst of winter, I find within me the invisible summer ... -- Leo Tolstoy
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It seems as though mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and forgiveness of injuries - and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing one another. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I'd rather end up wishing I hadn't than end up wishing I had. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The assertion that you are in falsehood and I am in truth ist the most cruel thing one man can say to another -- Leo Tolstoy
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Pay bad people with your goodness; fight their hatred with your kindness. Even if you do not achieve victory over other people, you will conquer yourself. - HENRI AMIEL -- Leo Tolstoy
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The more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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She doesn't stand up because her legs are too short. She's a very bad figure. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The ideas of the wise have been tested by centuries. Everything medium is lost and only original, deep and useful things are left. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Christian love comes from the understanding that there is a unity of divine origins in oneself and in other people, and not only in people, but in all living things. -- Leo Tolstoy
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One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He was much changed and grown even thinner since Pyotr Ivanovich had last seen him, but, as is always the case with the dead, his face was handsomer and above all more dignified than than when he was alive. -- Leo Tolstoy
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To sin is a human business, but to justify sins is a devilish business. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Three days after -- Leo Tolstoy
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Until you do what you believe in, you don't know whether you believe it or not. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Happiness is pleasure without regret -- Leo Tolstoy
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The aim of civilization is to translate everything into enjoyment. -- Leo Tolstoy
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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. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But it did not interest her at all. She and Levin had a conversation of there own, yet not a conversation but a sort of mysterious communication, which brought them every moment nearer, and stirred in both a sense of joyful terror before the unknown into which they were entering. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Whatever we may say about the soul going to the sky ... we know there is no sky but only an atmosphere. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Do not be sad about what you do not have. Instead, be happy about what you do have. If you will be sad about what you don't have, you will not be happy about what you do have. -- Leo Tolstoy
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To get rid of an enemy one must love him. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I can't think of you and myself apart. You and I are the same to me -- Leo Tolstoy
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Let us forgive each other - only then will we live in peace. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The two most powerful warriors are patience and time. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The strongest of all warriors are these two - Time and Patience. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Regard the society of women as a necessary unpleasantness of social life, and avoid it as much as possible. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I don't think badly of people. I like everybody, and I'm sorry for everybody. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Thus, in spite of his solitude, or in consequence of his solitude, his life was exceedingly full. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Enough or not...it will have to do -- Leo Tolstoy
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But any acquisition that doesn't correspond to the labour expended is dishonest -- Leo Tolstoy
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The great tragedy of atheists is that they walk through this world and have no one to thank. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Said He, whoever exalts himself, shall be humbled, and he who is humbled shall become exalted. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Nothing but ambition, nothing but the desire to get on, that's all there is in his soul," she thought; "as for these lofty ideals, love of culture, religion, they are only so many tools for getting on. -- Leo Tolstoy
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And he has to live like this on the edge of destruction, alone, with nobody at all to understand or pity him -- Leo Tolstoy
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In Varenka, she realized that one has but to forget oneself and love others, and one will be calm, happy, and noble. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In the depths of his heart Vasili Andreevich knew that it could not yet be near morning, but he was growing more and more afraid, and wished both to get to know and yet to deceive himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
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... for nightinggales - we know - can't live on fairytales. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Giving alms is only a virtuous deed when you give money that you yourself worked to get. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Why did it happen this way and not otherwise? Because this is how it happened. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I consider jealousy a humiliating and degrading feeling, and I shall never allow myself to be influenced by it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I wanted to run after him, but remembered that it is ridiculous to run after one's wife's lover in one's socks; and I did not wish to be ridiculous but terrible. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The danger lies not in the imaginary hydra of revolution, but in a stubborn traditionalism that impedes progress. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Nothing's amusing that isn't spiteful. -- Leo Tolstoy
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That one must either explain life to oneself so that it does not seem to be an evil mockery by some sort of devil, or one must shoot oneself. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Yes, there is something uncanny, demonic and fascinating in her. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Prayer is an invisible tool which is wielded in a visible world. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere. -- Leo Tolstoy
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In order to obtain and hold power, a man must love it. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I'm getting old, that's the thing! What's in me now won't be there anymore. -- Leo Tolstoy
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People of limited intelligence are fond of talking about "these days," imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of "these days" and that human nature changes with the times. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Once there is no freedom, there is no man -- Leo Tolstoy
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Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed. -- Leo Tolstoy
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True religion is that relationship, in accordance with reason and knowledge which man establishes with the infinite world around him, and which binds his life to that infinity and guides his actions. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If you look for perfection, you will never be satisfied. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The sanctification of political power by Christianity is blasphemy; it is the negation of Christianity. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Well, what is that to me? I can't see her! she cried. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Time and Patience. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Women are the pivot round which the world turns. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I only wished to say that ideas that have great results are always simple ones. The whole of my idea is that if vicious people are united and constitute a power, then honest folk must do the same. Now that's simple enough. -- Leo Tolstoy
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"A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist." -- Leo Tolstoy
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Just fancy! One can hear and see the grass growing,' thought Levin, as he noticed wet slate-coloured aspen leaf move close to the point of a blade of grass. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The compassionate are not rich; therefore, the rich are not compassionate. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He did not know that Levin was feeling as though he had grown wings. Levin knew she was listening to his words and that she was glad to listen to him. And this was the only thing that interested him. -- Leo Tolstoy
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hydra of revolution, -- Leo Tolstoy
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I lost my life over that curtain as I might have done when storming a fort. Is that possible? How terrible and how stupid. It can't be true! It can't, but it is. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I think that to find out what love is really like, one must first make a mistake and then put it right. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had forgotten
death. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Why nowadays there's a new fashion every day. -- Leo Tolstoy
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But why do his ears stick out so oddly? Did he have his hair cut? -- Leo Tolstoy
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The earth is the general and equal possession of all humanity and therefore cannot be the property of individuals. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The very same thing, don't you see, may be looked at tragically, and turned into a misery, or it may be looked at simply and even humorously. Possibly you are inclined to look at things too tragically. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Music is the shorthand of emotion -- Leo Tolstoy
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The most important time is Now -- Leo Tolstoy
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The one who is happy, that's the one who is right. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If a man does not work at necessary and good things, then he will work at unnecessary and stupid things -- Leo Tolstoy
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A holy spirit lives within you. -- Leo Tolstoy
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We lost because we told ourselves we lost. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Where is there any book of the law so clear to each man as that written in his heart. -- Leo Tolstoy
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You can't imagine what a pleasure this complete laziness is to me: not a thought in my brain- you might send a ball rolling through it! -- Leo Tolstoy
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Laws of motion of any kind only become comprehensible to man when he can examine arbitrarily selected units of that motion. But at the same time it is this arbitrary division of continuous motion into discontinuous units which give rise to a large proportion of human error. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man's life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Division of labor is a justification for sloth. -- Leo Tolstoy
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As soon as man applies his intelligence to any object at all, he unfailingly destroys the object. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Our feet have reached the holy places, but our hearts may not have done so. -- Leo Tolstoy
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All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Well, so it isn't time yet to die, is it? -- Leo Tolstoy
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He talked to her as people commonly do talk in society - all sorts of nonsense, but nonsense to which he could not help attaching a special meaning in her case. -- Leo Tolstoy
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I regard Christianity neither as an inclusive divine revelation nor as an historical phenomenon, but as a teaching which-gives us the meaning of life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Excuse me' he added, taking the opera glasses out of her hands and looking over her bare shoulder at the row of boxes opposite, 'i'm afraid i'm becoming ridiculous -- Leo Tolstoy
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She felt for him with her whole heart, the more because she was pitying him for suffering from the pain she had caused. -- Leo Tolstoy
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A man cannot get rid of the responsibility, for his own actions. -- Leo Tolstoy
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... the majority of men do not think in order to know the truth, but in order to assure themselves that the life which they lead, and which is agreeable and habitual to them, is the one which coincides with the truth. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He is not apprehended by reason, but by life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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playing patience, -- Leo Tolstoy
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Our body is a machine for living. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult. -- Leo Tolstoy
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To a lackey no man can be great, for a lackey has his own conception of greatness. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Where there is a man who does not labor because another is compelled to work for him, there slavery is. -- Leo Tolstoy
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God cannot be understood by logical reasoning but only by submission. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The question was a fashionable one, whether a definite line exists between psychological and physiological phenomena in human activity; and if so, where it lies? -- Leo Tolstoy
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It is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame some one else, and especially the person nearest of all to him, for the ground of his dissatisfaction. -- Leo Tolstoy
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No man is satisfied with his fortune, but every man is satisfied with his wit. -- Leo Tolstoy
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His only thought now was the question in what way he could best, with most propriety and comfort for himself, and consequently, with most justice, shake off the mud with which she had splattered him in her fall, and then proceed along his path of active, honourable, and useful existence. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Jealousy according to his notions was an insult to one's wife, and one ought to have confidence in one's wife -- Leo Tolstoy
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Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Very often, all the activity of the human mind is directed not in revealing the truth, but in hiding the truth -- Leo Tolstoy
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There are many faiths, but the spirit is one - in me, and in you, and in him. So that if everyone believes himself, all will be united; everyone be himself and all will be as one. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When in doubt, my dear fellow, do nothing. -- Leo Tolstoy
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If you want to be happy, just be. -- Leo Tolstoy
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The activity of art is ... as important as the activity of language itself, and as universal. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Why does everything exist that exists, and why do I exist?"
"Because it exists. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Everything intelligent is so boring. -- Leo Tolstoy
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For him words took away the beauty of what he saw. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Well, so you're pleased with your day. And so am I. First, I solved two chess problems, one of them a very nice one - it opens with a pawn. I'll show you. -- Leo Tolstoy
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To know God and to live is one and the same thing. God is life. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Moreover, he felt vaguely that what he called his convictions were not only ignorance but were a way of thinking that made the knowledge he needed impossible. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Happiness consists in always aspiring perfection, the pause in any level in perfection is the pause of happiness -- Leo Tolstoy
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One might murder and steal and yet be happy -- Leo Tolstoy
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God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part. -- Leo Tolstoy
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When one's head is gone one doesn't weep over one's hair! -- Leo Tolstoy
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Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible. -- Leo Tolstoy
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God is my desire -- Leo Tolstoy
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However, the truth requires one to make an effort if one is to be freed from misconceptions and lies. You -- Leo Tolstoy
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It was futile class of people who discussed not merely science and poetry but even the ways of governing men -- Leo Tolstoy
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Whenever my life came to a halt, the questions would arise: Why? And what next? -- Leo Tolstoy
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There is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Spring is the time of plans and projects. -- Leo Tolstoy
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He who wants results must allow for the means. -- Leo Tolstoy
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C<>ong>onong>stant idleness should be included in the tortures of hell, but it is, <>ong>onong> the c<>ong>onong>trary, c<>ong>onong>sidered to be <>ong>onong>e of the joys of paradise. -- Leo Tolstoy
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Let me give you a piece of advice: Leo Tolstoy is not the only human being on this planet. Yet all I ever hear you talking about is Leo Tolstoy ...
(<>trong>trtrong> Benjamin Sher) -- Leo Tolstoy