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“The more did I love them, and the easier it became for me to live.”

Leo Tolstoy

Source
My Confession
Date
1882
Attribution
Source identified
English wording
Leo Wiener — Translator · from Russian
Meaning

What does this quote mean?

Understanding ordinary people and their lives changes Tolstoy’s relation to existence: growing sympathy makes life more bearable by replacing detached judgment with human connection.

Source context

Where does it come from?

My Confession, Leo Wiener translation; Tolstoy describes how closer attention to living and departed people increased his affection for them and altered his ability to live.

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Attribution

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This wording is connected with the named source shown above. Translations and editions can vary, so consult the source note when exact wording matters.

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Themes

Ideas connected with this quotation

CommunityCompassionHealingHelping OthersHumanityLifeLoveMeaning Of LifePurposeServiceShort
Related quotations

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Source identified
“The motor power of his life is love.”
Leo Tolstoy · The Kingdom of God Is Within You · 1894

Within Tolstoy’s three-part account of life, the divine conception is motivated by love rather than personal enjoyment or social glory.

Source note: The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Chapter IV; Constance Garnett translation, Project Gutenberg #43302. In Tolstoy’s threefold account of animal, social and divine conceptions of life, the divine conception is governed by love and directed toward God rather than personal enjoyment or social glory.

Source identified
“life is the end and aim of consumption.”
John Ruskin · Unto This Last and Other Essays on Political Economy · 1862

Consumption is judged by what it ultimately does for human life, making economic activity a means rather than an end in itself within Ruskin’s argument.

Source note: Unto This Last, fourth essay; Project Gutenberg #36541. The line follows Ruskin’s distinction between production and consumption and retains the nineteenth-century political-economy setting.

Source identified
“The true life is the life which adds something”
Leo Tolstoy · My Religion · 1885

In Tolstoy’s Christian interpretation, meaningful life contributes to a human inheritance received from earlier generations and passed forward to others.

Source note: My Religion, Chapter VIII; Huntington Smith translation, represented 1885 Crowell edition, Project Gutenberg #43794. In Tolstoy’s contrast between isolated personal life and the “true life,” the passage treats inherited human labour and obligation across generations within his Christian argument, not as a secular universal claim.