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Leo Tolstoy -
War and Peace (1869)
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The peculiar and amusing nature of those answers stems from the fact that modern history is like a deaf person who is in the habit of answering questions that no one has put to them.
If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement of humanity and of the peoples, the first question — in the absence of a reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible — is: what is the power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously replies either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was very proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books.
All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it is not what was asked.
Leo Tolstoy
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What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of wills transferred to one person. On what condition are the wills of the masses transferred to one person? On condition that the person express the will of the whole people. That is, power is power. That is, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.
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I think that when you remember, remember, remember everything like that, you could go on until you remember what was there before you were in the world.
Leo Tolstoy
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In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive.
Leo Tolstoy
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I often think how unfairly life's good fortune is sometimes distributed.
Leo Tolstoy
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The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.
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What is bad? What is good? What should one love, what hate? Why live, and what am I? What is lie, what is death? What power rules over everything?" he asked himself. And there was no answer to any of these questions except one, which was not logical and was not at all an answer to these questions. This answer was: "You will die—and everything will end. You will die and learn everything—or stop asking.
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The only thing that we know is that we know nothing — and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.
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You will die — and it will all be over. You will die and find out everything — or cease asking.
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You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom.
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In historic events, the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself. Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of history and predestined from eternity.
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Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrei went up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the farewell kiss. And there in the coffin was the same face, though with closed eyes. "Ah, what have you done to me?" it still seemed to say, and Prince Andrei felt that something gave way in his soul and that he was guilty of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget.
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It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.
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I feel not only that I cannot disappear, as nothing disappears in the world, but that I will always be and have always been. I feel that, besides me, above me, spirits live, and that in this world there is truth.
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War is not a courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that, and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game. As it is now, war is the favourite pastime of the idle and frivolous.
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If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.
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One must put oneself in every one's position. To understand everything is to forgive everything.
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Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.
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By loving people without cause he discovered indubitable causes for loving them.
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The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the greater the number of people he is connected with, the more power he has over other people, the more obvious is the predestination and inevitability of his every action.
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Quote of the day
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Ogden Nash
Leo Tolstoy
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Born:
September 9, 1828
Died:
November 20, 1910
(aged 82)
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