Count Leo Tolstoy

(476 votes)   The sobs and tears of joy he had not foreseen rose with such force within him that his whole body shook and for a long time prevented him from speaking. Falling on his knees by her bed. He held his wife's hand to his lips and kissed it, and her hand responded to his kisses with weak movement of finger. Meanwhile, at the foot of the bed, in the midwife's expert hands, like the flame of a lamp, flickered the life of a human being who had never existed before...

Count Leo Tolstoy
1828-1910, Russian Novelist, Philosopher

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(281 votes)   Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.

Count Leo Tolstoy
1828-1910, Russian Novelist, Philosopher

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(198 votes)   Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the state, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment and its wars.

Count Leo Tolstoy
1828-1910, Russian Novelist, Philosopher

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(175 votes)   A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator the smaller the fraction.

Count Leo Tolstoy
1828-1910, Russian Novelist, Philosopher

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(170 votes)   The best generals I have known were... stupid or absent-minded men. Not only does a good army commander not need any special qualities, on the contrary he needs the absence of the highest and best human attributes -- love, poetry, tenderness, and philosophic inquiring doubt. He should be limited, firmly convinced that what he is doing is very important (otherwise he will not have sufficient patience), and only then will he be a brave leader. God forbid that he should be humane, should love, or pity, or think of what is just and unjust.

Count Leo Tolstoy
1828-1910, Russian Novelist, Philosopher

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(156 votes)   A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally both in mind and body as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world and therefore, as an Englishman, always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth -- science -- which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.

Count Leo Tolstoy
1828-1910, Russian Novelist, Philosopher

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(152 votes)   I am always with myself and it is I who am my tormentor.

Count Leo Tolstoy
1828-1910, Russian Novelist, Philosopher

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(151 votes)   Joy can be real only if people look on their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.

Count Leo Tolstoy
1828-1910, Russian Novelist, Philosopher

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(141 votes)   In historic events, the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself. Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of history and predestined from eternity.

Count Leo Tolstoy
1828-1910, Russian Novelist, Philosopher

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(139 votes)   Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them

Count Leo Tolstoy

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(132 votes)   Conceit is incompatible with understanding.

Count Leo Tolstoy
1828-1910, Russian Novelist, Philosopher

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(127 votes)   The only thing that we know is that we know nothing and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.

Count Leo Tolstoy
1828-1910, Russian Novelist, Philosopher

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(126 votes)   True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion.

Count Leo Tolstoy
1828-1910, Russian Novelist, Philosopher

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(120 votes)   But the peasants -- how do the peasants die?

Count Leo Tolstoy
1828-1910, Russian Novelist, Philosopher

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(120 votes)   There is only one time that is important -- NOW! It is the most important time because it is the only time hat we have any power.

Count Leo Tolstoy
1828-1910, Russian Novelist, Philosopher

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