Literature
What Men Live By
CevvelaLiterature
What Men Live By
Lev Tolstoy · İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları · 1885
8
Cevvela Score
7.6 (4.427 oy)
Reader Score
Summary
An angel (Michael) who was punished by God and sent to Earth, a collection of profound stories that recount how, by living among humans, he discovers the answers to the questions “What is in a human?” “What has not been given to a human?” and “By what does a human live?” through both suffering and love.
Quotes from Cevvela
“It is not given to man to know what he needs for himself.”
“A person truly lives not when they are anxious only for themselves, but when they feel love for others.”
“Within every person there is a seed of love that exists in spite of them.”
“We plan our lives, but fate prepares something entirely different for us.”
“True wisdom begins with accepting how helpless we are.”
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Reader Score: 7.6 / 10(4.427 votes)
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Tolstoy solves the existential equation of humanity in a peasant’s hut. It is a mirror of Cevvela’s naive yet profound soul. The book tells us that humans cannot live by their selfishness alone, and that the source of life is solely “love for others.” It proves that humans are so helpless they cannot foresee their future, yet within that helplessness lies a vast treasure: compassion. You come to understand how today’s selfish career goals and the greed for accumulation crumble into dust in the face of death. A person cannot sustain themselves; a person can breathe only through the compassion others have for them.