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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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Leo Tolstoy
Age: 82 †
Born: 1828
Born: January 1
Died: 1910
Died: January 1
Diarist
Esperantist
Essayist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Playwright
Prosaist
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
Law
Fill
Moral
Reform
Lives
Kindness
Political
Hearts
Government
Mere
Real
Empty
Heart
Based
Sanction
Believe
Politics
Sanctions

More quotes by 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
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My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and am in doubt most of the time.
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Talent is the capacity to direct concentrated attention upon the subject: the gift of seeing what others have not seen.
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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.
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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.
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Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallpox.
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Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings, and also experience them.
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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.
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It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. A handsome woman talks nonsense, you listen and hear not nonsense but cleverness. She says and does horrid things, and you see only charm. And if a handsome woman does not say stupid or horrid things, you at once persuade yourself that she is wonderfully clever and moral.
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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.
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One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.
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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.
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Himmlisch ist's wenn ich bezwungen Meine irdische Begier Aber doch wenn's nich gelungen Hatt' ich auch recht huebsch Plaisir! Loosely translated: It is heavenly, when I overcome My earthly desires But nevertheless, when I'm not successful, It can also be quite pleasurable.
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All the stories and descriptions of that time without exception peak only of the patriotism, self-sacrifice, despair, grief, and heroism of the Russians. But in reality it was not like that...The majority of the people paid no attention to the general course of events but were influenced only by their immediate personal interests.
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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.
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When you feel the desire for power, you should stay in solitude for some time
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Each person's task in life is to become an increasingly better person.
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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
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Knowledge is real knowledge only when it is acquired by the efforts of your intellect, not by memory
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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