Leo Tolstoy - A Confession

man began the relation of the finite to the infinite has been sought out and expressed. All these conceptions in which the finit ...

obtain a reply to the question; and o will always equal o, and therefore our path is probably erroneous. Thirdly, I began to und ...

me: that was not what repelled me. I was repelled by the fact that these people's lives were like my own, with only this differe ...

And I began to draw near to the believers among the poor, simple, unlettered folk: pilgrims, monks, sectarians, and peasants. Th ...

present. And of such people, understanding the meaning of life and able to live and to die, I saw not two or three, or tens, but ...

found them full of meaning. I understood that I had erred, and why I erred. I had erred not so much because I thought incorrectl ...

And indeed a bird is so made that it must fly, collect food, and build a nest, and when I see that a bird does this I have pleas ...

So those who do his will, the simple, unlearned working folk, whom we regard as cattle, do not reproach the master; but we, the ...

impossibility of proving the existence of a God, and I began to verify those arguments and to refute them. Cause, said I to myse ...

kill myself. And the worst of all was, that I felt I could not do it. Not twice or three times, but tens and hundreds of times, ...

that without which one cannot live. To know God and to live is one and the same thing. God is life." "Live seeking God, and then ...

seeing the progress down the current of all those who were adrift, I forgot the direction given me. In the very centre of the st ...

their pastors and by the traditions that live among the people. This meaning was clear to me and near to my heart. But together ...

for a faith to be able to reply to the questions of a king dying in luxury, of an old slave tormented by overwork, of an unreaso ...

was able to accept and perform all the rites of the Orthodox Church without understanding most of them. I then tried with all st ...

that they are more exposed to temptations than other people and therefore are more in need of being prayed for -- the prayers ab ...

purification from sin and the full acceptance of Christ's teaching. If that explanation was artificial I did not notice its arti ...

gold, and of Peter the publican. There were stories of the martyrs, all announcing that death does not exclude life, and there w ...

Eastern Church to other Churches -- to the Catholics and to the so-called sectarians. At that time, in consequence of my interes ...

the Sumsky Hussars to consider the Sumsky Hussars the best regiment in the world, and the Yellow Uhlans to consider that the bes ...