The appreciation of the merits of art (of the emotions it conveys) depends upon an understanding of the meaning of life...
Leo TolstoyIt is a harmful feeling, because it disturbs advantageous and joyous, peaceful relations with other peoples, and above all produces that governmental organization under which power may fall, and does fall, into the, hands of the worst men.
Leo TolstoyAnd all these people lived not by reason of any care they had for themselves, but by the love for them that was in other people.
Leo TolstoyTo 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