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It boils down to this: we should have done with humbug, and let war be war, and not a game ... If there were none of this magnanimity business in warfare, we should never go to war, except for something worth facing certain death for.

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
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Lev
graf Tolsztoj
Лев Николаевич
c граф Толстой
Lew
graf Tolstoi
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy
Lev Tolstoy
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Certain
None
Done
Except
Something
Worth
Never
Game
Humbug
Games
Boils
War
Magnanimity
Business
Warfare
Death
Facing

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Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation.
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but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.
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Nowadays, as before, the public declaration and confession of Orthodoxy is usually encountered among dull-witted, cruel and immoral people who tend to consider themselves very important. Whereas intelligence, honesty, straightforwardness, good-naturedness and morality are qualities usually found among people who claim to be non-believers.
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When the suffering of another creature causes you to feel pain, do not submit to the initial desire to flee from the suffering one, but on the contrary, come closer, as close as you can to her who suffers, and try to help her.
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Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and truth.
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I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.
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When you feel the desire for power, you should stay in solitude for some time
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Love those you hate you.
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Each person's task in life is to become an increasingly better person.
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A new conception of life cannot be imposed on men it can only be freely assimilated. And it can only be freely assimilated in two ways: one spiritual and internal, the other experimental and external.
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The true office of any faith is to give life a meaning which death cannot destroy.
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Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult.
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I'll tell you truly: I value my thought and work terribly, but in essence - think about it - this whole world of ours is just a bit of mildew that grew over a tiny planet. And we think we can have something great - thoughts, deeds! They're all grains of sand
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The most important of all sciences man can and must learn is the science of living so as to do the least evil and the greatest possible good.
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Debates conceal rather than reveal the truth. Truth is revealed in solitude.
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The best method for a given teacher is the one which is most familiar to the teacher.
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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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In vain do science and philosophy pose as the arbiters of the human mind, of which they are in fact only the servants. Religion has provided a conception of life, and science travels in the beaten path. Religion reveals the meaning of life, and science only applies this meaning to the course of circumstances.
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Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.
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