Leo Tolstoy - A Confession

government. Those ideals become more and more elevated, and humanity advances to its highest welfare. I am part of humanity, and ...

humanity of which we cannot know either the beginning or the end, of which we do not even know a small part, and then you will u ...

So that however I may turn these replies of philosophy, I can never obtain anything like an answer -- and not because, as in the ...

do I exist?" "Because it exists." Inquiring for one region of human knowledge, I received an innumerable quantity of exact repli ...

life of mankind. The error is there as before: development and progress in infinity can have no aim or direction, and, as far as ...

thing, that we so wish to live, merely means that we are ourselves nothing else but this desire to live, and know nothing but it ...

servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of herds and flocks above all that were be ...

portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun." So said Solomon, or whoever wrote those words. [7] And this is what t ...

himself from it, and to free others; and to do this so that, even after death, life shall not be renewed any more but be complet ...

[7] Tolstoy's version differs slightly in a few places from our own Authorized or Revised version. I have followed his text, for ...

him under the sun. "Therefore eat thy bread with joy and drink thy wine with a merry heart... . Live joyfully with the wife whom ...

exist, they act accordingly and promptly end this stupid joke, since there are means: a rope round one's neck, water, a knife to ...

have brought us to the admission of the senselessness of life, there remained in me a vague doubt of the justice of my conclusio ...

"Nothing prevents our denying life by suicide. well then, kill yourself, and you won't discuss. If life displeases you, kill you ...

All these doubts, which I am now able to express more or less systematically, I could not then have expressed. I then only felt ...

milliards consisted of men who had not yet arrived at an apprehension of all the profundity of the question -- that I sought for ...

creation in six days; the devils and angels, and all the rest that I cannot accept as long as I retain my reason. My position wa ...

In my reasonings I constantly compared (nor could I do otherwise) the finite with the finite, and the infinite with the infinite ...

In whatever way I stated the question, that relation appeared in the answer. How am I to live? -- According to the law of God. W ...

believes in the finite; if he understands the illusory nature of the finite, he must believe in the infinite. Without faith he c ...