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9662950
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Another's wife is a white swan, and ours is bitter wormwood.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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f82f790
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The only real science is the knowledge of how a person should live his life. And this knowledge is open to everyone.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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9e97325
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Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she would say to him, but she did not succeed in saying anything of it; his passion mastered her. She tried to calm him, to calm herself, but it was too late. His feeling infected her. Her lips trembled so that for a long while she could say nothing." "Yes, you have conquered me, and I am yours," she said at last, pressing his hands to her bosom. "So it had to be," he said. ..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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556e012
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She was utterly unlike what she had been when he first saw her. Both morally and physically she had changed for the worse. [...] He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it.
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truth
relevant
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Leo Tolstoy |
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eba8d44
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Blessed are the peacemakers; theirs is the kingdom of heaven
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heaven
leo-tolstoy
peace
kingdom
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Leo Tolstoy |
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dd96476
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It is impossible that all men have been doomed to suffer this awful horror!
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Leo Tolstoy |
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cefc5e5
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I turned my attention to every thing that was done by people who claimed to be Christians, I was horrified.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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2c44e83
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Like the majority of irreproachably virtuous women, wearying often of the monotony of a virtuous life, Dolly from a distance excused illicit love, and even envied it a little.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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71f8531
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It was all so strange, so unlike what he had been looking forward to.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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3ff6356
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And so there was no single cause for war, but it happened simply because it had to happen
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war
tolstoy
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Leo Tolstoy |
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da9a8af
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Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys' house. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him. This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of their family and household, were painfully..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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617c030
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Let fear once get possession of the soul, and it does not readily yield its place to another sentiment. Sebastopol by Leo Tolstoy
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fear-of-failure
fearlessness
soul
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Leo Tolstoy |
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9f939ce
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If you prefer it, Your Excellency, a private room will be free directly: Prince Golitsin with a lady. Fresh oysters have come in." "Ah, oysters!" Stepan Arkadyevich became thoughtful. "How if we were to change our program, Levin?" he said, keeping his finger on the bill of fare. And his face expressed serious hesitation. "Are the oysters good? Mind, now!" "They're Flensburg, Your Excellency. We've no Ostend." "Flensburg will do -- but are t..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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579b908
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Is it possible to love a woman who will never understand the profoundest interests of my life? Is it possible to love a woman simply for her beauty, to love the statue of a woman?
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Leo Tolstoy |
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b13f2a3
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there is a kind of business, called Government service, which allows men to treat other men as things without having human brotherly relations with them; and that they should be so linked together by this Government service that the responsibility for the results of their deeds should not fall on any one of them individually.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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c50a1c0
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As the sun and each atom of ether is a shphere complete in itself, yet at the same time only a part of a whole too vast for man to comprehend, so each individual bears within himself his own purpose, yet bears it ot serve a general purpose unfathomable to man.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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bf522c5
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Whatever answers faith gives, regardless of which faith, or to whom the answers are given, such answers always give an infinite meaning to the finite existence of man; a meaning that is not destroyed by suffering, deprivation or death. This means that only in faith can we find the meaning and possibility of life. I realized that the essential meaning of faith lies not only in the 'manifestations of things unseen', and so on, or in revelatio..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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6da2c25
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He knew she was there by the rapture and the terror that seized on his heart. She was standing talking to a lady at the opposite end of the ground. There was apparently nothing striking either in her dress or her attitude. But for Levin she was as easy to find in that crowd as a rose among nettles. Everything was made bright by her. She was the smile that shed light all around her.
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romance
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Leo Tolstoy |
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78d1610
|
During that summer Nekhludoff experienced that exaltation which youth comes to know not by the teaching of others, but when it naturally begins to recognize the beauty and importance of life, and man's serious place in it; when it sees the possibility of infinite perfection of which the world is capable, and devotes itself to that endeavor, not only with the hope, but with a full conviction of reaching that perfection which it imagines poss..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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64b2200
|
Faith is neither hope nor trust, but a particular spiritual state. Faith is man's awareness that his position in the world obliges him to perform certain actions. A person acts according to his faith, not as the catechism says because he believes in things unseen as in things seen, nor because he wishes to achieve things hoped for, but simply because having defined his position in the world it is natural for him to act according to it.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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a76be7e
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Does it ever happen to you," Natasha said to her brother, when they had settled in the sitting room, "does it ever happen to you that you feel there's nothing more - nothing; that everything good has already happened? And it's not really boring, but sad?" "As if it doesn't!" he said. "It's happened to me that everything's fine, everybody's merry, and it suddenly comes into my head that it's all tiresome and we all ought to die...."
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Leo Tolstoy |
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5fef55b
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In that brief glance Vronsky has time to notice the restrained animation that played over her face and fluttered between her shining eyes and the barely noticeable smile that curved her red lips. It was as if a surplus of something so overflowed her being that it expressed itself beyond her will, now in the brightness of her glance, now in her smile. She deliberately extinguished the light in her her eyes, but it shone against her will in a..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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720b9ad
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Indeed, a bird is made in such a way that it can fly, gather food and build a nest, and when I see a bird doing these things I rejoice. Goats, hares and wolves are made in order to eat, multiply and feed their families, and when they do this I feel quite sure that they are happy and that their lives are meaningful. What should a man do? He too must work for his existence, just as the animals do, but with the difference that he will perish i..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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a430174
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At that moment it meant nothing to him who might be standing over him, or what was said of him; he was only glad that people were standing near him and only wished that they would help him and bring him back to life, which seemed to him so beautiful now that he had today learned to understand it so differently.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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f8e2632
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On the twelfth of June, the forces of Western Europe crossed the borders of Russia, and war began--that is, an event took place contrary to human reason and to the whole of human nature.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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cc61098
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The difference between real material poison and intellectual poison is that most material poison is disgusting to the taste, but intellectual poison, which takes the form of cheap newspapers or bad books, can unfortunately sometimes be attractive.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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b7a7090
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Will the freshness, lightheartedness, the need for love, and strength of faith which you have in childhood ever return? What better time than when the two best virtues -- innocent joy and the boundless desire for love -- were the only motives in life?
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youth
childhood
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Leo Tolstoy |
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574fbf7
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You are all misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived. The sun does not go round the earth, but the earth goes round the sun, revolving as it goes, and turning towards the sun in the course of each twenty-four hours, not only Japan, and the Philippines, and Sumatra where we now are, but Africa, and Europe, and America, and many lands besides. The sun does not shine for some one mountain, or for some one island, or for some ..
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religion
the-universe
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Leo Tolstoy |
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8622bfd
|
she still found no words in which she could express the complexity of her feelings; indeed, she could not even find thoughts in which she could clearly think out all that was in her soul.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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e7e37cc
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Natasha was happy as she had never been in her life. She was at that highest pitch of happiness, when one becomes completely good and kind, and disbelieves in the very possibility of evil, unhappiness, and sorrow.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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bcb586f
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Himmlisch ist's, wenn ich bezwugen Meine irdische Begier; Aber doch wenn's nicht gelungen, Hatt' ich auch recht huebsch Plaisir!"* *"Splendid if I overcome My earthy passion, But if I succeed not, Still I have known happiness!"
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Leo Tolstoy |
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7828084
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There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life, which is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his elemental hive life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him. Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity. A deed done is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in time with the actions of millions of other men assu..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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9a5b8ae
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That one must either explain life to oneself so that it does not seem to be an evil mockery by some sort of devil, or one must shoot oneself.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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512d049
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When I came to you out of all that dust and heat and toil, I positively smelt violets at once. But not the sweet violet - you know, that early dark violet that smells of melting snow and spring grass.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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44ab4f5
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I realized that even if all the people in the world from the day of creation found this to be necessary according to whatever theory, I knew that it was not necessary and that it was wrong. Therefore, my judgements must be based on what is right and necessary and not on what people say and do; I must judge not according to progress but according to my own heart.
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existence
death
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Leo Tolstoy |
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3e5d616
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Music makes me forget myself, my real position; it transports me to some other position not my own. Under the influence of music it seems to me that I feel what I do not really feel, that I understand what I do not understand, that I can do what I cannot do. I explain it by the fact that music acts like yawning, like laughter: I am not sleepy, but I yawn when I see someone yawning; there is nothing for me to laugh at, but I laugh when I hea..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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b0aef62
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The memories of home and of her children rose up in her imagination with a peculiar charm quite new to her, with a sort of new brilliance. That world of her own seemed quite new to her now so sweet and precious that she would not on any account spend an extra day outside it, and she made up her mind that she would certainly go back next day.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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90f7f46
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Odurna je zivotinjska priroda zvjeri u covjeku, ali kad je ona u cistom obliku, onda je ti s visine svog dusevnog zivota vidis i prezires, pa ili pao, ili se odrzao - ti ostajes ono sto si bio; ali kad se ta ista zivotinja krije pod toboze estetskim, poetskim ovojem i iziskuje da joj se poklonis, onda sam nestajes u njoj i, obozavajuci zivotinju, ne razlikujes vise dobro od zla. Onda je to uzasno.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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df941d1
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The animalism of the brute nature in man is disgusting," he thought, "but as long as it remains in its naked form we observe it from the height of our spiritual life and despise it; and--whether one has fallen or resisted--one remains what one was before. But when that same animalism hides under a cloak of poetry and aesthetic feeling and demands our worship--then we are swallowed up by it completely and worship animalism, no longer disting..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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8594760
|
Davout looked up and gazed intently at him. For some seconds they looked at one another, and that look saved Pierre. Apart from conditions of war and law, that look established human relations between the two men. At that moment an immense number of things passed dimly through both their minds, and they realized that they were both children of humanity and were brothers.
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war
peace
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Leo Tolstoy |
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a515d3a
|
Nothing's amusing that isn't spiteful.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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fd6ecd3
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The Bible legend tells us that the absence of toil - idleness - was a condition of the first man's state of bliss before the Fall. This love of idleness has remained the same in the fallen man, but the curse still lies heavy on the human race....because our moral nature is such that we are unable to be idle and at peace. p 590
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Leo Tolstoy |
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f2fd84e
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If you feel that you are not free, look for the reason inside you.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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8a1107a
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Stepan Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations with himself. He was incapable of deceiving himself and persuading himself that he repented of his conduct. He could not at this date repent of the fact that he, a handsome, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love with his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children, and only a year younger than himself. All he repented of was that he had not succeeded better in hidin..
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Leo Tolstoy |