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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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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
Violence
Law
Culture
Replaced
Change
Extent
Men
Improvement
Love
Accomplished
Life
Based
Consciousness

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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Mathematics is the queen of disciplines.... it will drive the nonsense out of your head!
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Why does man have reason if he can only be influenced by violence?
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The meaning of life consists in the love and service of God.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but the desire to find the causes is implanted in man's soul.
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Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult.
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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.
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Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.
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In our age the common religious perception of men is the consciousness of the brotherhood of man - we know that the well-being of man lies in the union with his fellow men. True science should indicate the various methods of applying this consciousness to life. Art should transform this perception into feeling.
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.
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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.
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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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Debates conceal rather than reveal the truth. Truth is revealed in solitude.
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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War is not a polite recreation but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that and not play at war.
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.
Leo Tolstoy