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Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Quotes

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Famous Leo Tolstoy Quotes

“He knew and felt only that what was taking place was similar to what had taken place the previous year at the deathbed of his brother Nikolay in the hotel of the provincial town. But that grief and this joy both lay equally outside all of life's usual conditions, and were like apertures in this ordinary life through which something higher could be glimpsed. What was taking place was proceeding equally painfully and agonisingly and, as it perceived this higher something, his soul was ascending equally incomprehensibly to a height it had never understood before and with which his intellect could no longer keep pace.”

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Book:ANNA KARENINA
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“He was nine years old; he was a child; but he knew his own soul, it was precious to him, he protected it as the eyelid protects the eye, and he let no one into his soul without the key of love. His teachers complained that he did not want to learn, but his soul was filled with an abundant thirst for knowledge. He learned from Kapitonich, from his nanny, from Nadenka, from Vasily Lukich, but not from his teachers. The water that his father and his teacher were expecting to turn the wheels of their mill had long ago leaked away and was working elsewhere.”

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Book:ANNA KARENINA
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“Loving with human love, one may pass from love to hatred; but divine love cannot change. Nothing, not even death, can shatter it. It is all the very nature of the soul. Love is life. All, all that I understand, I understand only because of love. All is bound up in love alone. Love is God and dying means for me a particle of love, to go back to the universal and eternal source of love.”

LoveHumansMayMeanSoulLove IsDyingDivineSourceEternalHatredUniversalBoundsOne LoveDivine LoveParticlesGod Is LoveHuman LoveAlone In LoveLove Is Life
Author:Leo Tolstoy
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“Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but the desire to find the causes is implanted in man's soul.”

MenMindArtSoulPhilosophyDesireCausesHistoryEventsCompleteness
Book:WAR AND PEACE Complete Edition – All 15 Books in One Volume (World Classics Series): The Magnum Opus of the Greatest Russian Novelists and Author of Anna Karenina & The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Including the Biography & Memoirs of the Author)
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“The soul is immortal- well then, if I shall always live, I must have lived before, lived for a whole eternity.”

IfsWellsSoulWholeEternityImmortalReincarnation
Book:WAR AND PEACE Complete Edition – All 15 Books in One Volume (World Classics Series): The Magnum Opus of the Greatest Russian Novelists and Author of Anna Karenina & The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Including the Biography & Memoirs of the Author)
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“I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.”

IfsThinkingLoveMindHeartKindSoulDiversityIndividualityChanging Your LifeKinds Of LoveInspirational Diversity
Book:The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Memoirs, Letters & Essays on Art, Religion and Politics: Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Resurrection, The Death of Ivan Ilych, A Confession, The Cossacks, Correspondences with Gandhi, The Kreutzer Sonata, Fables and Stories for Childrenand Many More
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“At that instant he knew that all his doubts, even the impossibility of believing with his reason, of which he was aware in himself, did not in the least hinder his turning to God. All of that now floated out of his soul like dust. To whom was he to turn if not to Him in whose hands he felt himself, his soul, and his love?”

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Book:Anna Karenina: Tolstoy's Collections
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“But that had been grief--this was joy. Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the ordinary conditions of life; they were loopholes, as it were, in that ordinary life through which there came glimpses of something sublime. And in the contemplation of this sublime something the soul was exalted to inconceivable heights of which it had before had no conception, while reason lagged behind, unable to keep up with it.”

SoulReasonJoyGriefBehindsConditionsOrdinaryHeightContemplationConceptionSublimeGlimpseExaltedOrdinary LifeLoopholes
Book:ANNA KARENINA
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“Music makes me forget my real situation. It transports me into a state which is not my own. Under the influence of music I really seem to feel what I do not feel, to understand what I do not understand, to have powers which I cannot have. Music seems to me to act like yawning or laughter; I have no desire to sleep, but I yawn when I see others yawn; with no reason to laugh, I laugh when I hear others laugh. And music transports me immediately into the condition of soul in which he who wrote the music found himself at that time. ~The Kreutzer Sonata”

FeelsRealSoulStatesReasonSeemsDesireFoundMy OwnSleepForgetSituationLaughingInfluenceConditionsLaughterNo ReasonTransportYawningSonatas
Book:LEO TOLSTOY – The Ultimate Short Stories Collection: 120+ Titles in One Volume (World Classics Series): The Kreutzer Sonata, The Forged Coupon, Hadji Murad, Alyosha the Pot, Master and Man, Father Sergius, Diary of a Lunatic, The Cossacks, My Dream, The Young Tsar, Fables and Stories for Children...
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“I'll get angry in the same way with the coachman Ivan, argue in the same way, speak my mind inappropriately, there will be the same wall between my soul's holy of holies and other people, even my wife, I'll accuse her in the same way of my own fear and then regret it, I'll fail in the same way to understand with my reason why I pray, and yet I will pray--but my life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!”

PeopleWayMindMaySoulReasonWholeHappensSpeakMy OwnWifeFailingMinutesRegretWallPrayingHolyAngryMy WifeArguingWhole LifeMy SoulReason WhyMeaninglessI Pray
Author:Leo Tolstoy
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“A wound in the soul, coming from the rending of the spiritual body, strange as it may seem, gradually closes like a physical wound. And once a deep wound heals over and the edges seem to have knit, a wound in the soul, like a physical wound, can be healed only by the force of life pushing up from inside. This was the way Natasha's wound healed. She thought her life was over. But suddenly her love for her mother showed her that the essence of life - love - was still alive in her. Love awoke, and life awoke.”

WayMayStillsSoulBodySeemsSpiritualMotherForceAliveStrangeEssenceEdgesWoundsHealLove LifePushingHealedEssence Of LifeLove For HerNatashaDeep Wounds
Author:Leo Tolstoy
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“Where did I get it from? Was it by reason that I attained to the knowledge that I must love my neighbour and not throttle him? They told me so when I was a child, and I gladly believed it, because they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason! Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.”

ChildrenSoulReasonLawDesireExistenceStruggleSatisfactionMy SoulNeighbourUnreasonableHinderDeductionsLoving OthersThrottleStruggle For Existence
Author:Leo Tolstoy
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“The vegetarian movement ought to fill with gladness the souls of those who have at heart the realization of God's kingdom upon earth, not because vegetarianism itself is such an important step towards the realization of this kingdom (all real steps are equally important or unimportant), but because it serves as a criterion by which we know that the pursuit of moral perfection on the part of man is genuine and sincere.”

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Author:Leo Tolstoy
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“People involve themselves in countless activities which they consider to be important, but they forget about one activity which is more important and necessary than any other, and which includes all other things: the improvement of their soul”

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Book:A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Se
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