The divine perfection is the asymptote of human life to which it is always striving, and always approaching, though it can only be reached in infinity.
 Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894). copy citation

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Author Leo Tolstoy
Source The Kingdom of God Is Within You
Topic perfection infinity
Date 1894
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by Constance Garnett
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4602/pg4602-images.html

Context

“according to Christ's teaching it consists in an ever closer approximation to the divine perfection held up before every man, and recognized within himself by every man, in an ever closer and closer approach to the perfect fusion of his will in the will of God, that fusion toward which man strives, and the attainment of which would be the destruction of the life me know. The divine perfection is the asymptote of human life to which it is always striving, and always approaching, though it can only be reached in infinity. The Christian religion seems to exclude the possibility of life only when men mistake the pointing to an ideal as the laying down of a rule. It is only then that the principles presented in Christ's teaching appear to be destructive of life.” source