We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them.
("War and Peace")
More Quotes from Leo Tolstoy:
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.Leo Tolstoy
Oh no, Papa, Kitty objected warmly. Varenka adores her. And besides, she does so much good! Ask anyone you like! Everybody knows her and Aline Stah. Perhaps, he said, pressing her arm with his elbow. But it is better to do good so that, ask whom you will, no one knows anything about it.
Leo Tolstoy
To us, it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg was wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have the with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.
Leo Tolstoy
I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.
Leo Tolstoy
Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
Leo Tolstoy
All that day she had had the feeling that she was playing in the theatre with actors better than herself and that her poor playing spoiled the whole thing.
Leo Tolstoy
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