Всё, всё, что я понимаю, я понимаю только потому, что люблю.
Tolstoy. War and Peace, Book XII, Chapter 16
Tolstoy's Path of Life, “According to Erasmus.”
“It is a terrible world if suffering in it does not produce good. It is some evil device made only to torment people spiritually and bodily. If this is so, then this world that does evil not for future good, but idly, aimlessly, such a world is unspeakably immoral. It is as if it deliberately lures people in just to make them suffer. It beats us from birth, lends bitterness to every cup of happiness, and makes death an ever looming terror. And, of course, if there is no God and no immortality, the aversion to life expressed by men is understandable: it is aroused in them by the existing order, or rather disorder, a terrible moral chaos, as it should be called. But if only there is God above us and eternity before us, everything changes. We see the good in the evil, the light in the darkness, and hope drives away despair. Which of the two suppositions is more probable? Is it conceivable that moral beings, human beings, should be placed in the necessity of justly cursing the existing order of the world, while they have before them a way out that resolves their contradiction? They must curse the world and the day of their birth if there is no God and no future life. If, on the contrary, there is both, life itself becomes a good thing and the world a place of moral perfection and an infinite increase of happiness and holiness.”
Schiller, “The Metaphysician” (mocking Kant, Hegel and Schopenhauer, whom he knew personally):
"How deep below me lies the world,
I can barely see the little people below!
How my art, the highest of all, carries me,
So close to the tent of heaven!"
So calls from the roof of his tower
The slate roofer, the little big man
Hans Metaphysicus in his study.
Tell me, you little big man,
The tower from which your gaze looks down so nobly,
What is it made of- what is it built on?
How did you get up there yourself, and its bare heights,
What use are they to you, except to look down into the valley?
"σὲ νῦν τὸν ὕψιστον θεὸν καλῶ· ἠκροώμην τότε κομιδῆ παῖς ἔτι ὑπάρχων, πῶς ὁ κατ' ἐκεῖνο καιροῦ παρὰ τοῖς Ῥωμαίων αὐτοκράτορσιν ἔχων τὰ πρωτεῖα, δείλαιος, ἀληθῶς δείλαιος, πλάνῃ τὴν ψυχὴν ἠπατημένος, παρὰ τῶν δορυφορούντων αὐτόν, τίνες ἄρα εἶεν οἱ πρὸς τῇ γῇ δίκαιοι, πολυπραγμονῶν ἐπυνθάνετο, καί τις τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν θυηπόλων ἀποκριθείς, Χριστιανοὶ δήπουθεν, ἔφη. ὁ δὲ τὴν ἀπόκρισιν ὥσπερ τι καταβροχθίσας μέλι τὰ κατὰ τῶν ἀδικημάτων εὑρεθέντα ξίφη κατὰ τῆς ἀνεπιλήπτου ὁσιότητος ἐξέτεινεν."
"I call upon you now, the most high God. I was listening then, when I was still quite a small child, how the one who at that time held first place among the Roman emperors, wretched, truly wretched, his soul deceived by error, inquired of those surrounding him, asking with much curiosity who the just men by the earth might be, and one of those around him who performed sacrifices, answering, said, 'The Christians, of course.' And he, swallowing the answer as though it were some honey, extended the swords found for crimes against the blameless holiness."
"ἦν τότε, ἦν ἰδεῖν, μεθ' ὅσης ἐξουσίας ἡ σεμνότης ἐκείνη τῆς θεοσεβείας τῇ τῆς ὠμότητος συνεχείᾳ οὐ τὰς τυχούσας ἐφ' ἑκάστης ἡμέρας ὕβρεις ὑφίστατο, σωφροσύνη δ', ἣν τῶν πολεμίων οὐδεὶς ἠδίκησε πώποτε, ὀργίλων πολιτῶν παροινίας πάρεργον ἐγίγνετο. ποῖον πῦρ ποῖαι βάσανοι ποῖον στρεβλωτηρίων εἶδος οὐχὶ παντὶ σώματι καὶ ἡλικίᾳ πάσῃ ἀδιακρίτως προσήγετο; τὸ τηνικαῦτα ἐδάκρυε μὲν ἀναμφιβόλως ἡ γῆ, ὁ δὲ τὰ σύμπαντα περιέχων κόσμος τῷ λύθρῳ χραινόμενος ἀπεκλάετο, ἥ γε μὴν ἡμέρα αὐτὴ τῷ πένθει τοῦ θεάματος ἐνεκαλύπτετο."
"It was possible then to see, with how great authority that solemnity of piety, under the continuity of cruelty, was enduring no ordinary insults each day, and chastity, which no enemy had ever wronged, was becoming a by-product of the drunken violence of angry citizens. What fire, what tortures, what kind of rack was not applied indiscriminately to every body and every age? The earth was then undoubtedly weeping, and the world that contains everything was bewailing itself being stained with blood, and the day itself was veiling itself in the grief of the spectacle."
From Eusebius, Life of Constantine, Book Two, on the tyrant's persecution