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d0e4f5e
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True religion is that relationship, in accordance with reason and knowledge which man establishes with the infinite world around him, and which binds his life to that infinity and guides his actions.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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00bfec1
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The main reason for the terrible cruelty between men today, apart from the absence religion, is still the refined complexity of life which shields people from the consequences of their actions. However cruel Attila, Genghis Khan and their followers may have been, the act of killing people personally, face to face, must have been unpleasant: the wailing relatives and the presence of the corpses. And thus their cruelty was restrained. Nowaday..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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31ca68f
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He got up, wishing to go around, but the aunt handed him the snuffbox right over Helene, behind her back. Helene moved forward so as to make room and, smiling, glanced around. As always at soirees, she was wearing a gown in the fashion of the time, quite open in front and back. Her bust, which had always looked like marble to Pierre, was now such a short distance from him that he could involuntarily make out with his nearsighted eyes the li..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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cb4aeed
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Luxury cannot be obtained other than by enslaving other people.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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18ae8b3
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fakt smerti blizkogo znakomogo vyzval vo vsekh, uznavshikh pro nee, kak vsegda, chuvstvo radosti o tom, chto umer on, a ne ia.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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1f72dda
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I will still get angry at Ivan the coachman, I will still argue, I will express my thoughts ineptly, there will be a wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I will still blame her for my own terror and then repent of it, I will still not understand with my reason why I pray, and will go on praying - but my life now, my whole life, regardless of whatever may happen to me, each minute of it, is not only not ..
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levin
marian-schwartz
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Leo Tolstoy |
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b884f3b
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The animalism of the brute nature in man is disgusting', he thought, 'but as long as it remains in its naked form we observe it from the height of our spiritual life and despise it; and - whether one has fallen or resisted - one remains what one was before. But when that same animalism hides under a cloak of poetry and aesthetic feeling and demands our worship - then we are swallowed up by it completely and worship animalism, no longer dist..
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spirituality
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Leo Tolstoy |
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5bd1a91
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Where there has been true science, art has always been its exponent.
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science
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Leo Tolstoy |
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a38996a
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I have learned that men live not by selfishness, but by love.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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a2bd562
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Before and after the funeral I never ceased to cry and be miserable, but it makes me ashamed when I think back on that sadness of mine, seeing that always in it was an element of self-love - now a desire to show that I prayed more than any one else, now concern about the impression I was producing on others, now an aimless curiosity which caused me to observe Mimi's cap or the faces of those around me. I despised myself for not experiencing..
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childhood
death
funeral
grief
self-love
sorrow
tolstoy
unhappiness
youth
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Leo Tolstoy |
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e04dbca
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What you spoke of just now was a mistake, not love
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Leo Tolstoy |
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8ef908a
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It is better to know several basic rules of life than to study many unnecessary sciences. The major rules of life will stop you from evil and show you the good path in life; but the knowledge of many unnecessary sciences may lead you into the temptation of pride, and stop you from understanding the basic rules of life.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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4f713c0
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The most important acts, both for the one who accomplishes them and for his fellow creatures, are those that have remote consequences.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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c19c042
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My writing is like those little carved baskets made in prisons...
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writing
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Leo Tolstoy |
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d97493f
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Now he experienced a feeling akin to that of a man whom while calmly crossing a bridge over a precipice, should suddenly discover that the bridge is broken, and that there is a chasm below. That chasm was life itself, the bridge that artificial life in which Aleksey Aleksandrovich had lived.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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fdc2c50
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The little princess, like an old war horse that hears the trumpet, unconsciously and quite forgetting her condition, prepared for the familiar gallop of coquetry, without any ulterior motive or any struggle, but with naive and lighthearted gaiety.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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fa11d51
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A man cannot get rid of the responsibility, for his own actions.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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d739bbe
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Therein is the whole business of one's life; to seek out and save in the soul that which is perishing.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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0d142bd
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In the depths of his heart Vasili Andreevich knew that it could not yet be near morning, but he was growing more and more afraid, and wished both to get to know and yet to deceive himself.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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20b51ba
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Pierre's insanity consisted in not waiting, as he used to do, to discover personal attributes which he termed "good qualities" in people before loving them; his heart was now overflowing with love, and by loving people without cause he discovered indubitable causes for loving them."
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Leo Tolstoy |
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9482a89
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But the more intensely he thought, the clearer it became to him that it was indubitably so, that in reality, looking upon life, he had forgotten one little fact-that death will come, and all ends; that nothing was even worth beginning, and that there was no helping it anyway. Yes it was awful, but it was so.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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25998cc
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The thought that he might, and very probably would die that night occurred to him, but did not seem particularly unpleasant or dreadful. It did not seem particularly unpleasant, because his whole life had been not a continual holiday, but on the contrary an unceasing round of toil of which he was beginning to feel weary. And it did not seem particularly dreadful, because besides the masters he had served here, like Vasili Andreevich, he alw..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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94f3c7e
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False faith is the major cause of most of our misfortunes. The purpose of a human life is to bring the irrational beginning of our life to a rational beginning. In order to succeed in this, two things are important: (1) to see all irrational, unwise things in life and direct your attention to them and study them; (2) to understand the possibility of a rational, wise life. The major purpose of all teachers of mankind was the understanding of..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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dc935b5
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They say: misfortunes, sufferings...well, if someone said to me right now, this minute: do you want to remain the way you were before captivity, or live through it all over again? For God's sake, captivity again and horsemeat! Once we're thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost; but it's only here that the new and the good begins. As long as there's life, there's happiness. There's much, much still to come.
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suffering
war-and-peace
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Leo Tolstoy |
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9e28fdc
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Yes, it is very likely that I shall be killed tomorrow,' he thought. And suddenly at this thought of death a whole series of most distant, most intimate, memories rose in his imagination: he remembered his last parting from his father and his wife; he remembered the days when he first loved her. He thought of her pregnancy and felt sorry for her and for himself, and in a nervously emotional and softened mood he went out of the hut in which ..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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6dd56bb
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Even philanthropy did not have the desired effect. The genuine as well as the false paper money which flooded Moscow lost its value. The French, collecting booty, cared only for gold. Not only was the paper money valueless which Napoleon so graciously distributed to the unfortunate, but even silver lost its value in relation to gold.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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5221ef4
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Levin had often noticed in discussions between the most intelligent people that after enormous efforts, and an enormous expenditure of logical subtleties and words, the disputants finally arrived at being aware that what they had so long been struggling to prove to one another had long ago, from the beginning of the argument, been known to both, but that they liked different things, and would not define what they liked for fear of its being..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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b4a8680
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He saw either death or the approach of it everywhere. But his undertaking now occupied him all the more. He had to live his life to the end, until death came. Darkness covered everything for him; but precisely because of this darkness he felt that his undertaking was the only guiding thread in this darkness, and he seized it and held on to it with all his remaining strength.
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death
despair
dying
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Leo Tolstoy |
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3ec2701
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from ] For a historian considering the achievement of a certain aim, there are heroes; for the artist treating of a man's relation to all sides of life there cannot and should not be heroes, but there should be men.
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truth
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Leo Tolstoy |
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e7e8a2b
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It's beyond everything what's being done in the district, according to what this doctor tells me. He's a very intelligent fellow. And as I've told you before, I tell you again; it's not right for you not to go to the meetings, and altogether to keep out of the district business. If decent people won't go into it, of course it's bound to go all wrong. We pay the money, and it all goes in salaries, and there are no schools, not district nurse..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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12d1d7e
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from
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Leo Tolstoy |
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c73bbae
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I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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99c8cfe
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All that exists is One. People only call this One by different names.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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040d292
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She felt as though everything were beginning to be double in her soul, just as objects sometimes appear double to over-tired eyes. She hardly knew at times what it was she feared, and what she hoped for. Whether she feared or desired what had happened, or what was going to happen, and exactly what she longed for, she could not have said.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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cd9561c
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And the slaves prided themselves on their master, saying: 'There is no better lord than ours under the sun. He feeds and clothes us well, and gives us work suited to our strength. He bears no malice, and never speaks a harsh word to any one. He is not like other masters, who treat their slaves worse than cattle: punishing them whether they deserve it or not, and never giving them a friendly word. He wishes us well, does good, and speaks kin..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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9b306ee
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He spoke that refined French in which our grandparents not only spoke bit thought...
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Leo Tolstoy |
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32da34c
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Natasha, with a vigorous turn from her heel on to her toe, walked over to the middle of the room and stood still... Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her bosom heaved, a serious expression came into her face. She was thinking of no one and of nothing at that moment, and from her smiling mouth poured forth notes, those notes that anyone can produce at the same intervals, and hold for the same length of time, yet a thousand tim..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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1b48b47
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As he looked round, she too turned her head .Her shining gray eyes, that looked dark from the thick lashes, rested with friendly attention on his face, as though she were recognizing him, and then promptly turned away to the passing crowd, as though seeking someone. In that brief look Vronsky had time to notice the suppressed eagerness which played over her face, and flitted between the brilliant eyes and faint smile that curved her red lip..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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b6a4fa5
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He suddenly felt that the very thing that had once been the source of his suffering had become the source of his spiritual joy, that what had seemed insoluble when he condemned, reproached and hated, became simple and clear when he forgave and loved.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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9258267
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It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false.
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human-nature
inspiration
life
morality
philosophy
psychology
societal-expectations
society
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Leo Tolstoy |
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c3d969c
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That's my one desire, to be caught," answered Vronsky, with his serene,
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mischievous
rouge
sly
vronsky
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Leo Tolstoy |
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5adf506
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In reality it was just what is usually seen in the houses of people of moderate means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed only in resembling others like themselves: there are damasks, dark wood, plants, rugs, and dull and polished bronzes -- all the things people of a certain class have in order to resemble other people of that class. His house was so like the others that it would never have been noticed, but to him it ..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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f44909e
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One need only posit some threat to the public tranquility and any action can be justified. All the horrors of the reign of terror were based on concern for public tranquility.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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8eaa656
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A better life can only come when the consciousness of men is altered for the better; and therefore, those who wish to improve life must direct all their efforts towards changing both their own and other people's consciousness.
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Leo Tolstoy |