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
What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote cautions against justifying harm to living beings for the sake of benefiting others, warning of a potential increase in cruelty.
Leo Tolstoy's quote reflects his deep moral concern about the ethical implications of vivisection, indicating that if society normalizes the act of harming living beings for supposed greater good, it opens the door to unchecked brutality. He warns that this mentality can lead to a slippery slope where the value of life is diminished, leading to cruelty that knows no bounds.
Themes
VivisectionCrueltyEthicsMoralityAnimal Rights
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about animal rights and ethical treatment, this quote could be used to highlight potential consequences of harmful practices.
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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.
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