"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."
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Leo Tolstoy quotes (page 20 of 42)
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"These principles laid down as in variable rules: that one must pay a card sharper, but need not pay a tailor; that one must never tell a lie to a man, but one may to a woman; that one must never cheat any one, but one may a husband; that one must never pardon an insult, but one may give one and so on. These principles were possibly not reasonable and not good, but they were of unfailing certainty, and so long as he adhered to them, Vronsky felt that his heart was at peace and he could hold his head up."
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"Seas of blood have been shed for the sake of patriotism. One would expect the harm and irrationality of patriotism to be self-evident to everyone. But the surprising fact is that cultured and learned people not only do not notice the harm and stupidity of patriotism, they resist every unveiling of it with the greatest obstinacy and passion (with no rational grounds), and continue to praise it as beneficent and elevating."
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"Always the same. Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair rages, and always pain; always pain, always despair, and always the same."
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"Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity."
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"For us, with the rule of right and wrong given us by Christ, there is nothing for which we have no standard. And there is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth."
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"Some mathematician, I believe, has said that true pleasure lies not in the discovery of truth, but in the search for it."
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"Woman is generally so bad that the difference between a good and a bad woman scarcely exists."
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"Too much polishing and you spoil things. There's a limit to the expressibility of ideas. You have a new thought, an interesting one. Then, as you try to perfect it, it ceases to be new and interesting, and loses the freshness with which it first occurred to you. You're spoiling it."
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"We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening."
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"The most important person is the one you are with in this moment."
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"Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?"
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"In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair, and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still stronger and purer. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery had arisen, as insoluble, urging him to love and to life."
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"If I had any doubts at all about the justice of my dislike for Shakespeare, that doubt vanished completely. What a crude, immoral,vulgar, and senseless work Hamlet is. The whole thing is based on pagan vengeance; the only aim is to gather together as many effects as possible; there is no rhyme or reason about it."
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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."
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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."
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"And so the liberal tendency became a habit with Stepan Arkadyich, and he liked his newspaper, as he liked a cigar after dinner, for the slight haze it produced in his head."
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"Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth."
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"The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby justifies, in a way, all similar actions that lie outside those limits."
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"Wealth is a great sin in the eyes of God. Poverty is a great sin in the eyes of man."
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