'What dwells in man" I already knew. Now I learnt what is not given him. It is not given to man to know his own needs." - Meaning and context.">
QuotesCosmos
Ch. XI
“

The man is making preparations for a year, and does not know that he will die before evening. And I remembered God's second saying, "Learn what is not given to man."
'What dwells in man" I already knew. Now I learnt what is not given him. It is not given to man to know his own needs.

— Leo Tolstoy

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The man is making preparations for a year, and does not know that he will die before evening. And I remembered God's second saying, "Learn what is not given to man."
'What dwells in man" I already knew. Now I learnt what is not given him. It is not given to man to know his own needs." in the context of "Ch. XI" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Leo Tolstoy" (Quotes, What Men Live By (1881): Full text online Full text online) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app

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Leo Tolstoy

About Leo Tolstoy

Lev Nikolayevitch Tolstoy Ле́в Никола́евич Толсто́й, usually rendered Leo Tolstoy, or sometimes Tolstoi (9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910) was a Russian writer, philosopher and social activist (social critic), whose novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina are internationally praised classics of world literature. He was a major influence on the development of Christian anarchism and pacifism, contributing to such nonviolent resistance movements as those of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Bevel.