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
Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallpox.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that love can be harmful and that we might need a way to protect ourselves from its pains.
In this quote, Tolstoy compares love to a disease, proposing the idea that just as we create vaccines to protect ourselves from smallpox, we should also find a way to shield ourselves from the emotional turmoil that love can bring. This reflects the complex nature of love, where its potential for joy is often accompanied by suffering, highlighting the human desire to avoid heartbreak and longing.
Themes
LoveInoculationProtectionEmotionSuffering
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about the pains of romantic relationships.
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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