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The subject of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch and pin down in words--that is, to describe directly the life, not only of humanity, but even of a single people, appears to be impossible.

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
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Lev
graf Tolsztoj
Лев Николаевич
c граф Толстой
Lew
graf Tolstoi
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy
Lev Tolstoy
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People
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Impossible
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Describe
History
Directly
Even
Catch
Life
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More quotes by Leo Tolstoy

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In Varenka, she realized that one has but to forget oneself and love others, and one will be calm, happy, and noble.
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The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow- witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.
Leo Tolstoy
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The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of another's labor by force. It is immaterial whether this force be founded upon ownership of the slave or ownership of the money that he must get to live.
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There is no genius where there is not simplicity.
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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.
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What am I coming for? he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. You know that I have come to be where you are, he said I can't help it.
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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.
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If once we admit, be it for a single hour or in a single instance, that there can be anything more important than compassion for a fellow human being, then there is no crime against man that we cannot commit with an easy conscience.
Leo Tolstoy
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A wife's a worry, a non-wife's even worse.
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Regard the society of women as a necessary unpleasantness of social life, and avoid it as much as possible.
Leo Tolstoy
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There it is!' he thought with rapture. 'When I was already in despair, and when it seemed there would be no end- there it is! She loves me. She's confessed it.
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We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little trouble?
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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.
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I feel that I am entitled to my share of lightheartedness and there is nothing wrong with enjoying one's self simply, like a boy.
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We spend our lives trying to unlock the mystery of the universe, but there was a Turkish prisoner, Bahá’u’lláh, in Akka, Palestine who had the Key.
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Everything intelligent is so boring.
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But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.
Leo Tolstoy
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Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live.
Leo Tolstoy
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Morning or night, Friday or Sunday, made no difference, everything was the same: the gnawing, excruciating, incessant pain that awareness of life irrevocably passing but not yet gone that dreadful, loathsome death, the only reality, relentlessly closing in on him and that same endless lie. What did days, weeks, or hours matter?
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