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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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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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Tolstoi
Tolstoy
Lev Nikolaevich
graf Tolstoĭ
Lev Nikolayevich
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Count Lev Tolstoy
Leo
graf Tolstoy
Lev
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Lev
graf Tolsztoj
Лев Николаевич
c граф Толстой
Lew
graf Tolstoi
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy
Lev Tolstoy
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Often
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Revealing
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Directed
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More quotes by Leo Tolstoy

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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.
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.
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Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered.
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Never did Christ utter a single word attesting to a personal resurrection and a life beyond the grave.
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I imagine, joking apart, that to know love, one must make mistakes and then correct them.
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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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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Read less, study less, but think more
Leo Tolstoy
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One may say with one's lips: “I believe that the world was created six thousand years ago” or, “I believe that Jesus flew away into the skies and is sitting on the right hand of the Father” or, “God is One, and also Three” — but no one can believe it, because the words have no sense.
Leo Tolstoy
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When Levin thought what he was and what he was living for, he could find no answer to the questions and was reduced to despair but when he left off questioning himself about it, it seemed as though he knew both what he was and what he was living for, acting and living resolutely and without hesitation.
Leo Tolstoy
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Kings are the slaves of history.
Leo Tolstoy
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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.
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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The best method for a given teacher is the one which is most familiar to the teacher.
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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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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The magnanimity and sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed: she is so kindhearted that she can't look at blood, but enjoys eating the calf served up with sauce.
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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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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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