Among the members of various religions I met many deeply moral men with sincere belief. I wished to be a brother to these people. And what happened? The teaching which had promised me unity of all through one faith and through love, that very teaching, speaking through its highest representatives, told me that all those people were living a lie, that the thing which gave them strength of life was a temptation of the devil, and it is we alone who are in possession of the only possible truth. I saw that the Orthodox Church regarded as heretics all those who did not profess an identical faith to theirs, just as the Catholics and the others consider the Orthodox followers to be heretics.

Confession by Leo Tolstoy