Thoughts in example sentence
Formerly (it had been so almost from childhood and increasingly so till his complete maturity) when he tried to do anything for the good of everybody, for humanity, for Russia, for the whole village, he had noticed that the thoughts of it were agreeable, but the activity itself was always unsatisfactory; there was no full assurance that the work was really necessary, and the activity itself, which at first seemed so great, ever lessened and lessened till it vanished.