The First Step: An Essay on the Morals of Diet, to which are Added Two Stories |
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The First Step: An Essay on the Morals of Diet, to Which Are Added Two Stories Leo Tolstoy No preview available - 2018 |
The First Step: An Essay on the Morals of Diet, to Which Are Added Two Stories Leo Tolstoy No preview available - 2017 |
The First Step: An Essay on the Morals of Diet, to Which Are Added Two ... Leo Tolstoy No preview available - 2015 |
Common terms and phrases
abstinence accustomed animal food asked aspiration attainment augmentation AYLMER MAUDE back don't know beefsteaks began begin big church bread butcher called his servants carcasses cease chambers Childe Harold Christian teaching definite sequence demands desires dinner drink drum educated effeminacy effort Emelyán told Emelyán's wife Encyclical Ethics of Diet evil fasting follow Emelyán follow one definite fornication give gluttony Grandam head Heathen Hérzen higher humanity immoral inclosure justice kill labour lassie lead a righteous legs LEO TOLSTOY listen live look lust luxury majority Marcus Aurelius Master-Devil meat moral necessary Ogaréf order of succession oxen Pagan palace peasant pity Plato pleasure preach pretending prophetic regard renunciation Russian Sebastopol self-renunciation sent for Emelyán seriously slaughter-house slaughtered sleep soldiers step strive tasty thing Thomas Aquinas thought town truth Tsar's servants Tula upper classes vegetarianism verst virtue wish woman words Yásnaya Polyána
Popular passages
Page 19 - True, no one is commanded to distribute to others that which is required for his own necessities and those of his household; nor even to give away what is reasonably required to keep up becomingly his condition in life; "for no one ought to live unbecomingly.
Page 43 - ... gluttony, idleness, sexual love. And one must begin to contend with these lusts from the beginning, not with the complex, but with the fundamental ones, and that also in a definite order. And this order is determined both by the nature of things, and also by the tradition of human wisdom.
Page 5 - What, then, do I wish to say? That in order to be moral people must cease to eat meat? Not at all. I only wish to say that for a good life a certain order of good actions is indispensable; that if a man's aspirations toward right living be serious they will inevitably follow one definite sequence; and that in this sequence the first virtue a man will strive after will be self-control, selfrestraint. And in seeking for self-control...
Page 49 - Fasting is an indispensable condition of a good life ; but in fasting, as in self-control in general, the question arises, with what shall we begin ? — How to fast, how often to eat, what to eat, what to avoid eating ? And as we can do no work seriously without regarding the necessary order of sequence, so also we cannot fast without knowing where to begin — with what to commence self-control in food. Fasting ! And even an analysis of how to fast, and where to begin ! The notion seems ridiculous...
Page 78 - But when he had corn left over, he looked for ways of getting pleasure out of it. And I showed him a pleasure — drinking! And when he began to turn God's good gifts into spirits for...
Page 7 - In an hour or two the great novelist — perhaps the greatest living novelist — will appear in his moujik's garb, with the dark loose coat and leather girdle, and we shall sally forth together over field and forest, drinking in the glad sunshine, and exulting in the beauty and glory and melody of spring.
Page 50 - I had wished to visit a slaughterhouse, in order to see with my own eyes the reality of the question raised when vegetarianism is discussed. But at first I felt ashamed to do so, as one is always ashamed of going to look at suffering which one knows is about to take place, but which one cannot avert ; and so I kept putting off my visit. But a little while ago I met on the road...
Page 6 - And in fasting, if he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because, to say nothing of the excitation of the passions caused by such food, its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling — killing ; and is called forth only by greediness and the desire for tasty food.
Page 76 - Master-Devil came to see for himself how the case stood. He came to the peasant's house, and saw that the peasant had invited his well-to-do neighbours and was treating them to drink. His wife was offering the drink to the guests, but just as she was going to hand it round, she stumbled against the table and spilt a glass.
Page 74 - ... a crust of bread. He got his plough ready, wrapped the bread in his coat, put it under a bush, and set to work. After a while, when his horse was tired and he was hungry, the peasant fixed the plough, let the horse loose to graze, and went to get his coat and his breakfast.