"When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be."
"So you see,' said Stepan Arkadyich, 'you're a very wholesome man. That is your virtue and your defect. You have a wholesome character, and you want all of life to be made up of wholesome phenomena, but that doesn't happen. So you despise the activity of public service because you want things always to correspond to their aim, and that doesn't happen. You also want the activity of the individual man always to have an aim, that love and family life always be one. And that doesn't happen. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade."
3 likes
Source: Leo Tolstoy (2015). “What is Art?: The Kingdom of God is Within You”, p.185, eKitap Projesi
About the author
Same author
More quotes by Leo Tolstoy
"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."
"Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly."
"Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source."
"Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking."
"Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it."