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Confessions - Leo Tolstoy

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Quotes

  • Every time I tried to express my most heartfelt desires to be morally good I met with contempt and ridicule; and as soon as I would give in to vile passions I was praised and encouraged
  • The starting point of it all was, of course, moral perfection, but this was soon replaced by a belief in overall perfec­tion, that is, a desire to be better not in my own eyes or in the eyes of God, but rather a desire to be better in the eyes of other people. And this effort to be better in the eyes of other people was very quickly displaced by a longing to be stronger than other people, that is, more renowned, more important, wealthier than others
  • These people are the most radical disbelievers, for if faith, in their view, is a means of obtaining some worldly end, then it is indeed no faith at all
  • The real reason behind what we were doing was that we wanted to obtain as much money and praise as possible
  • the only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless
  • What will come of what I do today and tomorrow? What will come of my entire life? Expressed differently, the question may be: Why should I live? Why should I wish for anything or do anything? Or to put it still differently: Is there any meaning in my life that will not be destroyed by my inevitably approaching death?
  • their clarity and precision are inversely pro­portionate to their applicability to the questions of life. The less they have to do with the questions of life, the clearer and more precise they are; the more they attempt to provide answers to the questions of life, the more vague and unattractive they become
  • “What am I?” or “Why do I live?” or “What am I to do?”-another question must first be settled: “What is the life of the humanity that is unknown to us, the life of which we can know only a small portion over a short period of time?”
  • “We move closer to the truth only to the extent that we move further from life,” says Socrates, as he prepares for death
  • What do we who love truth strive for in life?
  • rational knowledge denies the meaning of life, but the huge masses of people acknowl­edge meaning through an irrational knowledge. And this irrational knowledge is faith
  • scientific knowledge only gives you the facts. It only relates the finite to the finite, it does not relate a finite life to anything infinite

Notes