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
For if we allow that human life is always guided by reason, we destroy the premise that life is possible at all.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that if reason alone dictates human life, it undermines the very essence of existence.
Tolstoy argues that to believe human life can be entirely governed by reason is to reject the complexities and emotions that make life meaningful. He points out that human experiences are often irrational and emotional, which are essential to the human condition. Hence, reducing life to mere rationality would paradoxically make life itself untenable.
In practice
During a philosophical debate on the nature of human existence, one might use this quote to highlight the limitations of rationality.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 β such is my idea of happiness.
Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin-a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or not man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing.
Sensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is one they would like to show the world very often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe.
A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.
We should live totally in the face of the night and of the Evil.
He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: general Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.
INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
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