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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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Leo Tolstoy
Age: 82 †
Born: 1828
Born: January 1
Died: 1910
Died: January 1
Diarist
Esperantist
Essayist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Playwright
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Writer
Tolstoi
Tolstoy
Lev Nikolaevich
graf Tolstoĭ
Lev Nikolayevich
Count Tolstoy
Count Lev Tolstoy
Leo
graf Tolstoy
Lev
Count Tolstoy
Lev
graf Tolsztoj
Лев Николаевич
c граф Толстой
Lew
graf Tolstoi
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy
Lev Tolstoy
Count Leo Tolstoy
Culture
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Thought
Reformers
Life
Motives
Motive
Explain
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More quotes by Leo Tolstoy

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Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.
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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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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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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It seldom happens that a man changes his life through his habitual reasoning. No matter how fully he may sense the new plans and aims revealed to him by reason, he continues to plod along in old paths until his life becomes frustrating and unbearable-he finally makes the change only when his usual life can no longer be tolerated.
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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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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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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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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Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.
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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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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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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Great works of art are only great because they are accessible and comprehensible to everyone.
Leo Tolstoy
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Kings are the slaves of history.
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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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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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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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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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