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36e566d
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What is precious is not the reward but the work. And I wish you to understand that. If you work and study in order to get a reward, the work will seem hard to you; but when you work, if you love the work, you will find your reward in that.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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719601f
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And the candle by the light of which she had been reading that book filled with anxieties, deceptions, grief and evil, flared up brighter than ever, lit up for her all that had once been darkness, sputtered, grew dim and went out for ever.
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sadness-lonelyness
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Leo Tolstoy |
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00b134b
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And therefore the Christian, who is subject only to the inner divine law, not only cannot carry out the enactments of the external law, when they are not in agreement with the divine law of love which he acknowledges (as is usually the case with state obligations), he cannot even recognize the duty of obedience to anyone or anything whatever, he cannot recognize the duty of what is called allegiance.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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a66804a
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Many families remain for years in the same place, though both husband and wife are sick of it, simply because there is neither complete division nor agreement between them.
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marriage
daily-life
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Leo Tolstoy |
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abfba38
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In Varenka, she realized that one has but to forget oneself and love others, and one will be calm, happy, and noble.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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6da3dd9
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I do value my work awfully; but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have something great - ideas, work - it's all dust and ashes.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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d73e3c0
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The subject of history is the life of peoples and mankind.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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531d1cd
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In my considered opinion, salary is payment for goods delivered and it must conform to the law of supply and demand. If, therefore, the fixed salary is a violation of this law - as, for instance, when I see two engineers leaving college together and both equally well trained and efficient, and one getting forty thousand while the other only earns two thousand , or when lawyers and hussars, possessing no special qualifications, are appointed..
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salaries
supply-and-demand
tolstoy
economics
government
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Leo Tolstoy |
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17a470d
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Darkness had fallen upon everything for him; but just because of this darkness he felt that the one guiding clue in the darkness was his work, and he clutched it and clung to it with all his strength.
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perseverance
strength
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Leo Tolstoy |
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63607c1
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He remembered his mother's love for him, and his family's, and his friends', and the enemy's intention to kill him seemed impossible.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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9a50a62
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I know now that people only seem to live when they care only for themselves, and that it is by love for others that they really live. He who has Love has God in him, and is in God - - because God is Love.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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9d6ba26
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And the light by which she had read the book filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and evil, flared up more brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that had been in darkness, flickered, began to grow dim, and was quenched forever.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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4da8b83
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Levin had been married three months. He was happy, but not at all in the way he had expected to be. At every step he found his former dreams disappointed, and new, unexpected surprises of happiness. He was happy; but on entering upon family life he saw at every step that it was utterly different from what he had imagined. At every step he experienced what a man would experience who, after admiring the smooth, happy course of a little boat o..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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bae37ab
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He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered , with difficulty recognizing the beauty for which he picked and ruined it.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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c415bc7
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Pierre was one of those people who are strong only when they feel themselves perfectly pure.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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33c5f29
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At moments of departure and a change of life, people capable of reflecting on their actions usually get into a serious state of mind. At these moments they usually take stock of the past and make plans for the future.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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d8586bd
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Lay me down like a stone oh God, and raise me up like a new bread"."
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Leo Tolstoy |
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07a3990
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What a terrible thing war is, what a terrible thing!
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Leo Tolstoy |
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6f0e165
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All the stories and descriptions of that time without exception peak only of the patriotism, self-sacrifice, despair, grief, and heroism of the Russians. But in reality it was not like that...The majority of the people paid no attention to the general course of events but were influenced only by their immediate personal interests.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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92eea25
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War is not a polite recreation, but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to realize this and not make a game of it... as it stands now it's the favorite pastime of the idle and frivolous.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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19c4171
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Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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8e2d90a
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But it seems to me that a man cannot and ought not to say that he loves, he said. Why not? I asked. Because it will always be a lie. As though it were a strange sort of discovery that someone is in love! Just as if, as soon as he said that, something went snap-bang - he loves. Just as if, when he utters that word, something extraordinary is bound to happen, with signs and portents, and all the cannons firing at once. It seems to me, he went..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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5b486c6
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The question of how things will settle down is the only important question...
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Leo Tolstoy |
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a4e7410
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I feel not only that I cannot disappear, as nothing disappears in the world, but that I will always be and have always been. I feel that, besides me, above me, spirits live, and that in this world there is truth.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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d67bf0f
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Meanwhile spring arrived. My old dejection passed away and gave place to the unrest which spring brings with it, full of dreams and vague hopes and desires.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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2e87ed4
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Where there is law there is injustice
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Leo Tolstoy |
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a5965e2
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Vronsky meanwhile, in spite of the complete fulfilment of what he had so long desired, was not completely happy. He soon felt that the realization of his longing gave him only one grain of the mountain of bliss he had anticipated. That realization showed him the eternal error men make by imagining that happiness consists in the gratification of their wishes. When first he united his life with hers and donned civilian clothes, he felt the de..
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society-novel
russian-literature
realistic-fiction
novel
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Leo Tolstoy |
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b7c8479
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Are we not all flung into the world for no other purpose than to hate each other, and so to torture ourselves and one another?
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hate
world
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Leo Tolstoy |
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baa44f7
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I was wrong when I said that I did not regret the past. I do regret it; I weep for that past love which can never return. Who is to blame, I do not know. Love remains, but not the old love; its place remains, but it all wasted away and has lost all strength and substance; recollections are still left, and gratitude; but...
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loss
love
regret
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Leo Tolstoy |
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dbfc679
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Every reform by violence is to be deprecated, because it does little to correct the evil while men remain as they are, and because wisdom has no need of violence.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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74d32fa
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He knew that Vronsky could not be prevented from amusing himself with painting; he knew that he and all dilettanti had a perfect right to paint what they liked, but it was distasteful to him. A man could not be prevented from making himself a big wax doll, and kissing it. But if the man were to come with the doll and sit before a man in love, and began caressing his doll as the lover caressed the woman he loved, it would be distasteful to t..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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0f0f408
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He walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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6035079
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The assertion that you are in falsehood and I am in truth ist the most cruel thing one man can say to another
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Leo Tolstoy |
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3a65fa5
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Power is the sum total of the wills of the mass, transfered by express or tactic agreement to rulers chosen by the masses.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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73fd47f
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Then he had looked on his spirit as his I; now, it was his healthy strong animal I that he looked upon as himself. And all this terrible change has come about because he had ceased to believe himself and had taken to believing others. This he had done because it was too difficult to live believing one's self: believing one's self, one had to decide every question, not in favour of one's animal I, which was always seeking for easy gratifica..
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spirit
character
honesty
reflection
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Leo Tolstoy |
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15ab110
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At the advent of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the human heart: one very reasonably invites a man to consider the nature of the peril and the means of escaping it; the other, with a still greater show of reason, argues that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger since it is not in man's power to foresee everything and avert the general march of events, and it is better therefore to shut o..
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war
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Leo Tolstoy |
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d938bca
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Ivan Iylich saw that he was dying, and was in continual despair. At the bottom of his heart Ivan Ilyich knew that he was dying; but so far from growing used to the idea, he simply did not grasp it - he was utterly unable to grasp it. The example of the syllogism that he had learned in Kiseveter's logic - Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal - had seemed to him all his life correct only as regards Caius, but not at all r..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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36624b6
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At school he had done things which had formerly seemed to him very horrid and made him feel disgusted with himself when he did them; but when later on he saw that such actions were done by people of good position and that they did not regard them as wrong, he was able not exactly to regard them as right, but to forget about them entirely or not be at all troubled at remembering them.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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0bc2538
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A cigar is a sort of thing, not exactly a pleasure, but the crown and outward sign of pleasure.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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f2e065d
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After dinner Natasha went to the clavichord, at Prince Andrey's request, and began singing. Prince Andrey stood at the window, talking to the ladies, and listened to her. In the middle of a phrase, Prince Andrey ceased speaking, and felt suddenly a lump in his throat from tears, the possibility of which he had never dreamed of in himself. He looked at Natasha singing, and something new and blissful stirred in his soul. He was happy, and at ..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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d4d39af
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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.
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vronsky
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Leo Tolstoy |
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5466d10
|
In actuality, it was like the homes of all people who are not really rich but who want to look rich, and therefore end up looking like one another: it had damasks, ebony, plants, carpets, and bronzes, everything dark and gleaming--all the effects a certain class of people produce so as to look like people of a certain class. And his place looked so much like the others that it would never have been noticed, though it all seemed quite except..
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death
furniture
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Leo Tolstoy |
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319e73c
|
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.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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09d0ac4
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Society in itself is no great harm, but unsatisfied social aspirations are a bad and ugly business. We must certainly accept, and we will.
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story
quote
leo-tolstoy
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Leo Tolstoy |