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The idea shared by many that life is a vale of tears is just as false as the idea shared by the great majority, the idea to which youth and health and riches incline you, that life is a place of entertainment.

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
Lev Nikolayevich
Count Tolstoy
Count Lev Tolstoy
Leo
graf Tolstoy
Lev
Count Tolstoy
Lev
graf Tolsztoj
Лев Николаевич
c граф Толстой
Lew
graf Tolstoi
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy
Lev Tolstoy
Count Leo Tolstoy
Health
Incline
Idea
Shared
Place
Riches
Ideas
False
Many
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Great
Majority
Life
Tears
Youth
Vale

More quotes by Leo Tolstoy

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Many families remain for years in the same place, though both husband and wife are sick of it, simply because there is neither complete division nor agreement between them.
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People jump back and forth in pursuit of pleasures only because they see the emptiness of their lives more clearly than they do the emptiness of whichever new entertainment attracts them.
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I began to realize that the most profound wisdom of man was rooted in the answers given by faith and that I did not have the right to deny them on the grounds of reason above all, I realized that these answers alone can form a reply to the question of life.
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Eating meat is a leftover of the greatest brutality [killing] the transition to vegetarianism is the first and most natural consequence of enlightenment.
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The higher a man's conception of God, the better will he know Him. And the better he knows God, the nearer will he draw to Him.
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Great works of art are only great because they are accessible and comprehensible to everyone.
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The kinder and the more thoughtful a person is, the more kindness he can find in other people.
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It seems that it is impossible to live without discovering the purpose of your life. And the first thing which a person should do is to understand the meaning of life. But the majority of people who consider themselves to be educated are proud that they have reached such great height that they cease to care about the meaning of existence.
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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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No one has yet added up all the heavy, stress-filled workdays as well as the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives that are wasted to produce the world's amusements. It is for this reason that amusements are not so amusing.
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The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people.
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As soon as man applies his intelligence to any object at all, he unfailingly destroys the object.
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Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?
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Knowledge is real knowledge only when it is acquired by the efforts of your intellect, not by memory
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Better to know a few things which are good and necessary than many things which are useless and mediocre
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Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible.
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What is important is not the length of life, but the depth of life. What is important is not to make life longer, but to take your soul out of time, as every sublime act does.
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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.
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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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Suddenly I heard the words of Christ and understood them, and life and death ceased to seem to me evil, and instead of despair I experienced happiness and the joy of life undisturbed by death.
Leo Tolstoy