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People understand the meaning of eating lies in the nourishment of the body only when they cease to consider that the object of that activity is pleasure. ...People understand the meaning of art only when they cease to consider that the aim of that activity is beauty, i.e., pleasure.

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
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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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Beauty
Cease
Pleasure
Object
Lying
Consider
Understand
Eating
Art
Lies
Body
Activity
People
Meaning
Nourishment
Objects
Aim

More quotes by Leo Tolstoy

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By patriotism is meant, not only spontaneous, instinctive love for one's own nation, and preference for it above all other nations, but also the belief that such love and preference are good and useful.
Leo Tolstoy
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Everything intelligent is so boring.
Leo Tolstoy
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Either you are so underdeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or you won't sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it.
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Violence produces only something resembling justice, but it distances people from the possibility of living justly, without violence.
Leo Tolstoy
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To regard Christ as God, and to pray to him, are to my mind the greatest possible sacrilege.
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There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth.
Leo Tolstoy
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God cannot be understood by logical reasoning but only by submission.
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.
Leo Tolstoy
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People involve themselves in countless activities which they consider to be important, but they forget about one activity which is more important and necessary than any other, and which includes all other things: the improvement of their soul
Leo Tolstoy
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Just as one candle lights another and can light thousands of other candles, so one heart illuminates another heart and can illuminate thousands of other hearts.
Leo Tolstoy
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If you do not know your place in the world and the meaning of your life, you should know there is something to blame and it is not the social system, or your intellect, but the way in which you have directed your intellect.
Leo Tolstoy
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The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.
Leo Tolstoy
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What doubt can you have of the Creator when you behold His creation?... Who has decked the heavenly firmament with its stars? Who has clothed the earth in its beauty? How could it be without the creator?
Leo Tolstoy
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Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult.
Leo Tolstoy
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What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you deal with incompatibility.
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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But I'm glad you'll see me as I am. Above all, I wouldn't want people to think that I want to prove anything. I don't want to prove anything, I just want to live to cause no evil to anyone but myself. I have that right, haven't I?
Leo Tolstoy
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He who has a mistaken idea of life, will always have a mistaken idea of death.
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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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