Russian - Novelist | September 9, 1828 - November 20, 1910
The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby justifies, in a way, all similar actions that lie outside those limits.
Leo Tolstoy
LieLawLimitsWayOutsideWithin
If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one's reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state.
LiveTimeMenReasonShootBecause
Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself.
LifeNatureBodyGoLivingDefend
All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.
LoveUnderstandEverythingBecause
In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.
AloneHistoryWarPeopleIndependent
Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.
GrowthTruthGoldAwayLikeWashing
He never chooses an opinion; he just wears whatever happens to be in style.
StyleOpinionNeverWhateverJust
The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.
PowerPatriotismSufferingWrongSum
The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God.
GodMenWordsDoneDifferenceDeeds
If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.
LoveRelationshipMenMindsHearts
Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.
PeopleQuestionsGoDeafHistorians
Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.
ManHumanityUniversalInstrument
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