Books author - "Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy"
true one. This noteof regret and of a curious longing for perfection were the chiefmental impressions which I gathered from that new stage of mygrowth--impressions which imparted new principles to my view ofmyself, of men, and of God's world. O good and consoling voice,which in later days, in sorrowful days when my soul yieldedsilently to the sway of life's falseness and depravity, so oftenraised a sudden, bold protest against all iniquity, as well asmercilessly exposed the past, commanded,
spheres, and in recent times it has sofaded away as to prevail no longer against man's reasonableunderstanding and the true religious feeling. People saw moreand more clearly, and now the majority see quite clearly, thesenselessness and immorality of subordinating their wills tothose of other people just like themselves, when they are biddento do what is contrary not only to their interests but also totheir moral sense. And so one might suppose that having lostconfidence in any religious
the young shopman had thrown her up she was getting more and more into the habit of drinking. It was not so much the flavour of wine that tempted her as the fact that it gave her a chance of forgetting the misery she suffered, making her feel more unrestrained and more confident of her own worth, which she was not when quite sober; without wine she felt sad and ashamed. Just at this time a woman came along who offered to place her in one of the largest establishments in the city, explaining all
it is only necessary for him to display intelligence,--one man in the military service, another in the judicial, another on the violin. There have been many and varied expressions of human wisdom, and these phenomena were known to the men of the nineteenth century. The wisdom of Rousseau and of Lessing, and Spinoza and Bruno, and all the wisdom of antiquity; but no one man's wisdom overrode the crowd. It was impossible to say even this,--that Hegel's success was the result of the symmetry of
s of our present progress could justify this deed; and that though everybody from the creation of the world had held it to be necessary, on whatever theory, I knew it to be unnecessary and bad; and therefore the arbiter of what is good and evil is not what people say and do, nor is it progress, but it is my heart and I. Another instance of a realization that the superstitious belief in progress is insufficient as a guide to life, was my brother's death. Wise, good, serious, he fell ill while
ing upstairs. "Well, I'm glad he has come; things will be more lively." After a look in the glass I ran gaily downstairs and into the veranda; I was out of breath and did not disguise my haste. He was sitting at the table, talking to Katya about our affairs. He glanced at me and smiled; then he went on talking. From what he said it appeared that our affairs were in capital shape: it was now possible for us, after spending the summer in the country, to go either to Petersburg for
true one. This noteof regret and of a curious longing for perfection were the chiefmental impressions which I gathered from that new stage of mygrowth--impressions which imparted new principles to my view ofmyself, of men, and of God's world. O good and consoling voice,which in later days, in sorrowful days when my soul yieldedsilently to the sway of life's falseness and depravity, so oftenraised a sudden, bold protest against all iniquity, as well asmercilessly exposed the past, commanded,
spheres, and in recent times it has sofaded away as to prevail no longer against man's reasonableunderstanding and the true religious feeling. People saw moreand more clearly, and now the majority see quite clearly, thesenselessness and immorality of subordinating their wills tothose of other people just like themselves, when they are biddento do what is contrary not only to their interests but also totheir moral sense. And so one might suppose that having lostconfidence in any religious
the young shopman had thrown her up she was getting more and more into the habit of drinking. It was not so much the flavour of wine that tempted her as the fact that it gave her a chance of forgetting the misery she suffered, making her feel more unrestrained and more confident of her own worth, which she was not when quite sober; without wine she felt sad and ashamed. Just at this time a woman came along who offered to place her in one of the largest establishments in the city, explaining all
it is only necessary for him to display intelligence,--one man in the military service, another in the judicial, another on the violin. There have been many and varied expressions of human wisdom, and these phenomena were known to the men of the nineteenth century. The wisdom of Rousseau and of Lessing, and Spinoza and Bruno, and all the wisdom of antiquity; but no one man's wisdom overrode the crowd. It was impossible to say even this,--that Hegel's success was the result of the symmetry of
s of our present progress could justify this deed; and that though everybody from the creation of the world had held it to be necessary, on whatever theory, I knew it to be unnecessary and bad; and therefore the arbiter of what is good and evil is not what people say and do, nor is it progress, but it is my heart and I. Another instance of a realization that the superstitious belief in progress is insufficient as a guide to life, was my brother's death. Wise, good, serious, he fell ill while
ing upstairs. "Well, I'm glad he has come; things will be more lively." After a look in the glass I ran gaily downstairs and into the veranda; I was out of breath and did not disguise my haste. He was sitting at the table, talking to Katya about our affairs. He glanced at me and smiled; then he went on talking. From what he said it appeared that our affairs were in capital shape: it was now possible for us, after spending the summer in the country, to go either to Petersburg for