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In order to obtain and hold power a man must love it. Thus the effort to get it is not likely to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities of pride, craft and cruelty.

Leo Tolstoy

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Leo Tolstoy
Age: 82 †
Born: 1828
Born: January 1
Died: 1910
Died: January 1
Diarist
Esperantist
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Opinion Journalist
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Lev Nikolaevich
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Лев Николаевич
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Order
Opposites
Power
Likely
Coupled
Must
Thus
Obtain
Men
Goodness
Craft
Love
Pride
Crafts
Hold
Qualities
Effort
Cruelty
Quality
Opposite

More quotes by Leo Tolstoy

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In order to obtain and hold power, a man must love it.
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.
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There is only one time that is important -- NOW! It is the most important time because it is the only time hat we have any power.
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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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... 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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To speak of it would be giving importance to that which has none.
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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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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.
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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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You see, if you take pains and learn in order to get a reward, the work will seem hard but when you work... if you love your work, you will find your reward in that.
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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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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After the doctor's departure Koznyshev felt inclined to go to the river with his fishing rod. He was fond of angling, and seemed proud of being able to like such a stupid occupation.
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!
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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.
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There can be only one permanent revolution - a moral one the regeneration of the inner man. 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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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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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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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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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