Art begins when a man, with a purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs.
Leo TolstoyRead
the very fact of the death of someone close to them aroused in all who heard about it, as always, a feeling of delight that he had died and they hadn't.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the complex emotions surrounding death, revealing a mixture of relief and guilt felt by the living when a loved one passes away.
Tolstoy's quote explores the paradoxical feelings that arise when someone close to us dies. While mourning the loss, there can also be an unsettling sense of relief or delight that we have escaped death in that moment. This sparks a deeper contemplation of mortality, human connection, and the subtle dynamics of our emotional responses in the face of loss.
Themes
DeathEmotionsLossReliefGuilt
In practice
Example use cases
In a eulogy, one might reflect on the bittersweet feelings of losing a loved one while acknowledging their own continued life.
More from Leo Tolstoy
All quotes →Pierre looked into the sky, into the depths of the retreating, twinkling stars. "And all this is mine, and all this is in me, and all this is me!" thought Pierre. "And all this they've caught and put in a shed and boarded it up!
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People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing-refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.
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It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else's mistakes.
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Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man in music, and in that is its power and significance.
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A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.
Leo TolstoyRead
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