Quote

Every time I tried to express my most heartfelt desires to be morally good I met with contempt and ridicule and as soon as I would give in to vile passions I was praised and encouraged. Ambition, love of power, self-interest, lechery, pride, anger, vengeance-all of it was highly esteemed.

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
Every
Pride
Highly
Praised
Good
Passion
Desires
Heartfelt
Would
Interest
Express
Vengeance
Time
Desire
Mets
Morally
Love
Power
Anger
Ridicule
Give
Ambition
Encouraged
Lechery
Self
Tried
Passions
Esteemed
Giving
Soon
Contempt
Vile

More quotes by Leo Tolstoy

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Upon meeting, you're judged by your clothes, upon parting you're judged by your wits.
Leo Tolstoy
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If you're not enjoying your work, you should either change your attitude, or change your job.
Leo Tolstoy
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Not all of life's roads are set fast, for a man may do this or a man may do that and not even the gods know the mind of a man.
Leo Tolstoy
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The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.
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Men pray to the Almighty to relieve poverty. But poverty comes not from God's laws-it is blasphemy of the worst kind to say that. Poverty comes from man's injustice to his fellow man.
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Division of labor is a justification for sloth.
Leo Tolstoy
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In all human sorrow nothing gives comfort but love and faith, and that in the sight of Christ's compassion for us no sorrow is trifiling.
Leo Tolstoy
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Where there is love, there is God also.
Leo Tolstoy
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Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.
Leo Tolstoy
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War is not a polite recreation but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that and not play at war.
Leo Tolstoy
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Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective, of nature with reason, of the unconscious with the conscious, and therefore art is the highest means of knowledge.
Leo Tolstoy
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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.
Leo Tolstoy
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There is no genius where there is not simplicity.
Leo Tolstoy
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... a man has to think of his soul before everything else.
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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Life did not stop, and one had to live.
Leo Tolstoy
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Himmlisch ist's wenn ich bezwungen Meine irdische Begier Aber doch wenn's nich gelungen Hatt' ich auch recht huebsch Plaisir! Loosely translated: It is heavenly, when I overcome My earthly desires But nevertheless, when I'm not successful, It can also be quite pleasurable.
Leo Tolstoy
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What time can be more beautiful when the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute the sole motives of your life.
Leo Tolstoy
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So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and for what purpose he had been placed in the word.
Leo Tolstoy
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Whatever question arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their buzzing on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum drowned and obscured the voices of those who were disputing honestly.
Leo Tolstoy