"When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be."
"Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man's emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity."
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Source: Leo Tolstoy (2009). “Last Steps: The Late Writings of Leo Tolstoy: The Late Writings of Leo Tolstoy”, p.98, Penguin UK
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