SIMPLISTIC DESCRIPTIONS

One of the commonest and most generally accepted delusions is that every man can be qualified in some a particular way - said to be kind, wicked, stupid, energetic, apathetic and so on. People are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, more often wise than stupid, more often energetic than apathetic or vice versa; but it could never be true to say of one man that he is kind or wise, and of another that he is wicked or stupid. Yet we are always classifying mankind in this way. And it is wrong. Human beings are like rivers; the water is one and the same in all of them but very river is narrow in some places, flows swifter in others; here it is broad, there still, or clear, or cold, or muddy, or warm. It is the same with men. Every man bears within the germs of every human quality, and now manifests one, now another, and frequently he is quite unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.'

Leo Tolstoy in David Brooks, How to Know a Person, p.36.

HOW GRACE LEADS TO LOVE

'...loving people without reason, he discovered the unquestionable reasons for which it was worth loving them.'

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, p.1124.

THOSE WHO MAKE HISTORY DON'T KNOW IT?

'In historical events what is most obvious is the prohibition against eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Only unconscious activity bears fruit, and a man who plays a role in historical event never understands its significance. If he attempts to understand it, he is struck with fruitlessness.'

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, p.944.

THE DANGER OF THEORISTS

'...one of those theorists who so love their theory that they forget the purpose of the theory - its application in practice; in his love for theory, he hated everything practical and did not want to know about it. He was even glad of failure, because failure, proceeding from departures from theory in practice, only proved to him the correctness of his theory.'

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, p.640.

THE CONFIDENCE OF DIFFERENT NATIONS

'...only Germans can be self-assured on the basis of an abstract idea - science, that is, an imaginary knowledge of the perfect truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he considers himself personally, in mind as well as body, irresistibly enchanting for men as well as women. An Englishman is self-assured on the grounds that he is a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore, as an Englishman, he always knows what he must do, and knows that everything he does as an Englishman is unquestionably good. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and others. A Russian is self-assured precisely because he does not know anything and does not want to know anything, because he does not believe if possible to know anything fully. A German in self-assured worst of all, and most firmly of all, because he imagines he knows the truth, science, which he has invented himself, but which for him is the absolute truth.'

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, p.639.

STRATEGY VS. TACTICS & PEOPLE-WATCHING

'He had already managed to draw from his military experience the conviction that in military matters the most profoundly devised plans meant nothing...that everything depended on how one responded to the unexpected and unpredictable actions of the enemy, that everything depended on how and by whom the action was conducted.'

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, p.632.

MIDDLE-CLASS MATERIALISM

'...it was the same as with all people who are not exactly rich, but who want to resemble the rich, and for that reason only resemble each other: damasks, ebony, flowers, carpets, and bronzes, dark and gleaming - all that all people of a certain kind acquire in order to resemble people of a certain kind.' 

Leo Tolstoy, 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich' in The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories, p.57. 

ESCAPING DEATH

'...the very fact of the death of a close acquaintence called up in all those who heard of it, as always, a feeling of joy that it was he who was dead and not I.' 

Leo Tolstoy, 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich' in The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories, p.40.