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
Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the complexity of human emotions, particularly in understanding our fears and desires.
In this quote, Tolstoy explores the ambiguity that often surrounds our innermost feelings. The narrator grapples with a lack of clarity about what she truly fears or wishes for, signifying the often intertwined and confusing nature of desire and fear. It suggests that sometimes, individuals may find themselves caught between past experiences and future aspirations, struggling to identify their true emotions and motivations.
Themes
FearDesireEmotionsUncertaintySelf-Awareness
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about personal growth, one might refer to this quote to highlight the struggle of understanding one's true feelings.
More from Leo Tolstoy
All quotes βPierre 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!
Leo TolstoyRead
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.
Leo TolstoyRead
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.
Leo TolstoyRead
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.
Leo TolstoyRead
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.
Leo TolstoyRead
Similar quotes
Our problem is within ourselves. We have found the means to blow the world physically apart. Spiritually, we have yet to find the means to put together the world's broken pieces.
Thomas E. DeweyRead
Whoever is going to listen to the philosophers needs a considerable practice in listening.
EpictetusRead
There are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives, amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular conclusions of their own minds have been attained. The occupation is often full of interest and he who attempts it for the first time is astonished by the apparently illimitable distance and incoherence between the starting-point and the goal.
Edgar Allan PoeRead
If western culture is shown to be rich it is because, even before the Enlightenment, it has tried to "dissolve" harmful simplifications through inquiry and the critical mind.
Umberto EcoRead
Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus non faederis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.
Thomas JeffersonRead
To be true to one's own freedom is, in essence, to honor and respect the freedom of all others.
Dwight D. EisenhowerRead