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a46ccb8
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The heroine of my writings is She, whom I love with all the forces of my being, She who always was, is and will be beautiful, is Truth
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Leo Tolstoy |
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e17e3bb
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It seems to me that what we call beauty in a face lies in the smile: if the smile heightens the charm of the face, the face is a beautiful one; if it does not alter it, the face is ordinary, and if it is spoilt by a smile, it is ugly.
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youth
boyhood
face
tolstoy
smile
childhood
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Leo Tolstoy |
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0b23f91
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Drops Dripped. Quiet talk went on. Horses neighed and scuffled. Someone snored.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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7246584
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Pure, perfect sorrow is as impossible as pure and perfect joy.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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4fcf687
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There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life which is the more free the more abstract it's interests, and his elemental swarm-life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him
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Leo Tolstoy |
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62dcdba
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Germans are self-confident on the basis of an abstract notion--science, that is, the supposed knowledge of absolute truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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eed1242
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As though I had been going steadily downhill, imagining that I was going uphill. So it was in fact. In public opinion I was going uphill, and steadily as I got up it, life was ebbing away from me....And now the work's done, there's only death.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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438a7ae
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If you could forget and forgive what happened." He snatched the chalk with nervous, trembling fingers, and breaking it, wrote the initial letters of the following phrase, "I have nothing to forget and to forgive; I have never ceased to love you."
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Leo Tolstoy |
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f76734f
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Satan can never be driven out by Satan. Error can never be corrected by error, and evil cannot be vanquished by evil.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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cabce9e
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As a house can be only be built satisfactorily and durably when there is a foundation, and a picture can be painted only when there is something prepared to paint it on, so carnal love is only legitimate, reasonable, and lasting when it is based on the respect and love of one human being for another.
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sex
marriage
christianity
love
christian-marriage
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Leo Tolstoy |
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dde3f2e
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In affirming my belief in Christ's teaching, I could not help explaining why I do not believe, and consider as mistaken, the Church's doctrine, which is usually called Christianity.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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9f7f896
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But she did not take her eyes from the wheels of the second car. And exactly at the moment when the midpoint between the wheels drew level with her, she threw away the red bag, and drawing her head back into her shoulders, fell on her hands under the car, and with a light movement, as though she would rise immediately, dropped on her knees. And at the instant she was terror-stricken at what she was doing. 'Where am I? What am I doing? What ..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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5e4abb1
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When in doubt, my dear fellow, do nothing.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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115f588
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He knew she was there by the rapture and the terror that seized on his heart. She was standing talking to a lady at the opposite end of the ground. There was apparently nothing striking either in her dress or her attitude. But for Levin she was as easy to find in that crowd as a rose among nettles. Everything was made bright by her. She was the smile that shed light on all round her. "Is it possible I can go over there on the ice, go up to ..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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dea9926
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It was long before I could believe that human learning had no clear answer to this question. For a long time it seemed to me, as I listened to the gravity and seriousness wherewith Science affirmed its positions on matters unconnected with the problem of life, that I must have misunderstood something. For a long time I was timid in the presence in learning, and I fancied that the insufficiency of the answers which I received was not its fau..
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science
questions
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Leo Tolstoy |
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25396c8
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One must do one of two tings: either admit that the existing order of society is just, and then stick up for one's rights in it;or acknowledge that you are enjoying unjust privileges, as i do, and then enjoy them and be satisfied.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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072b317
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He was always in a hurry to get where he was not.
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seeking
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Leo Tolstoy |
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7fd647b
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Between Countess Nordston and Levin there had been established those relations, not infrequent in society, in which two persons, while ostensibly remaining on friendly terms, are contemptuous of each other to such a degree that they cannot even treat each other seriously and cannot even insult each one another.
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relationships
contempt
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Leo Tolstoy |
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f5b6170
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In his Petersburg world people were divided into two quite opposite sorts. One--the inferior sort: the paltry, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous people who believe that a husband should live with the one wife to whom he is married, that a girl should be pure, a woman modest, and a man, manly, self controlled and firm; that one should bring up one's children to earn their living, should pay one's debts, and other nonsense of the kind. These..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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32dee6b
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I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper...there will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people...but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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24c435c
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A wife's a worry, a non-wife's even worse.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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65103aa
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So it would be, were it not for the law of inertia, as immutable a force in men and nations as in inanimate bodies. In men it takes the form of the psychological principle, so truly expressed in the words of the Gospel, " They have loved darkness better than light, because their deeds were evil." This principle shows itself in men not trying to recognise the truth, but to persuade themselves that the life they are leading, which is what the..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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9673d06
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the mere fact of the death of a near acquaintance aroused, as usual, in all who heard of it the complacent feeling that, "it is he who is dead and not I." --
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Leo Tolstoy |
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c53ef34
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As often happens between people who have chosen different ways, each of them, while rationally justifying the other's activity, despised it in his heart. To each of them it seemed that the life he led was the only real life, and the one his friend led was a mere illusion.
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real-life
perception-of-reality
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Leo Tolstoy |
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24ce04d
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Spring, love, happiness! Are you not weary of that stupid, meaningless, constantly repeated fraud? Always the same and always a fraud! There is no spring, no sun, no happiness!
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world-weariness
insignificance
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Leo Tolstoy |
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ee6cd1d
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Pierre looked into the sky, into the depths of the retreating, twinkling stars. "And all this is mine, and all this is in me, and all this is me!" thought Pierre. "And all this they've caught and put in a shed and boarded it up!"
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Leo Tolstoy |
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2032214
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He meditated on the use to which he should put all the energy of youth which comes to a man only once in life. Should he devote this power, which is not the strength of intellect or heart or education, but an urge which once spent can never return, the power given to a man once only to make himself, or even - so it seems to him at the time - the universe into anything he wishes: should he devote it to art, to science, to love, or to practic..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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34693c8
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The further one goes, the better the land seems.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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085e644
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The worker picked up Pakhom's spade, dug a grave, and buried him - six feet from head to heel, exactly the amount of land a man needs.
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poverty
wealth
greed
living
life
life-and-death
dying
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Leo Tolstoy |
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bbf01c2
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Ivan Ilych had been a colleague of the gentlemen present and was liked by them all. He had been ill for some weeks with an illness said to be incurable. His post had been kept open for him, but there had been conjectures that in case of his death Alexeev might receive his appointment, and that either Vinnikov or Shtabel would succeed Alexeev. So on receiving the news of Ivan Ilych's death the first thought of each of the gentlemen in that p..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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6fd6d87
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What energy!' I thought. 'Man has conquered everything, and destroyed millions of plants, yet this one won't submit.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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7eda142
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When Mother smiled, no matter how nice her face had been before, it became incomparably nicer and everything around seemed to brighten up as well.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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9e20b12
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what time can be more beautiful than the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute the sole motives of your life?
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love
innocence
childhood
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Leo Tolstoy |
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c03d68f
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The feelings resembled memories; but memories of what? Apparently one can remember things that have never happened.
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memories
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Leo Tolstoy |
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aea728a
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A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand men, not athletes but rather weak and ordinary people, have subdued two hundred million vigorous, clever, capable, and freedom-loving people?
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Leo Tolstoy |
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9bd7a43
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the extraordinary autumn weather that always comes as a surprise, when the sun hangs low and gives more heat than in spring, when everything shines so brightly in the rare clear atmosphere that the eyes smart, when the lungs are strengthened and refreshed by inhaling the aromatic autumn air, when even the nights are warm, and when in those dark warm nights, golden stars startle and delight us continually by falling from the sky.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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4d72281
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But I'm married, and believe me, in getting to know thoroughly one's wife, if one loves her, as some one has said, one gets to know all women better than if one knew thousands of them.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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a8802ad
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Military life in general depraves men. It places them in conditions of complete idleness, that is, absence of all rational and useful work; frees them from their common human duties, which it replaces by merely conventional duties to the honor of the regiment, the uniform, the flag; and while giving them on the one hand absolute power over other men, also puts them into conditions of servile obedience to those of higher ranks than themselve..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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f35e3f5
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n lmr'h hy Hjr l`thr@ l'ssy fy Tryq lrjl . wmn lS`b 'n yHb lrjl mr'h w'n yf`l shyy' . hnk wsyl@ wHyd@ lm`rf@ mt` lHb dwn n ySbH lHb `y'q hy lzwj
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Leo Tolstoy |
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740da3c
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dh kn l`ml jydan kfn, fn lHss ldhy y`br `nh lfnn syntql l~ lns sw kn 'khlqyan 'm Gyr 'khlqy, wdh ntql lHss l~ lns lakhryn, fnhm y`yshwnh, wlkn l y`yshwnh fHsb, nm kl wHd mnhm y`yshh wfq Tryqth. wltfsyrt l'khr~ klh zy'd@ l Hj@ lyh. shrH '`ml lfnn 'mr l yjwz lqym bh. flw kn mn lmmkn tfsyr m 'rdh lfnn blklmt lqlh lfnn dhth blklmt. 'm hw fqlh mn khll fnh l'nh mn lmHl nql lHss ldhy y`yshh bwsyl@ khr~. n shrH lntjt lfny@ blklmt yw'kd `l~ 'n ldhy ..
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فن
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Leo Tolstoy |
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df471b4
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n lHy@ l`skry@ fy Hd dhth mfsd@ llrjl, dh tj`lhm fy Hl@ bTl@ tkd tkwn mstmr@ 'w `l l'ql fy Hl@ nqT` `n kl `ml mfyd wm`qwl wfy Hyn trf` `n kwhlhm sy'r lwjbt lnsny@, fnh tDfy `lyhm shrf zy'f hw shrf lfrq@ lty yntmwn lyh wshrf lry@ wtmnHhm slTn mTlq `l~ lkthyr mn lns fy Hyn tfrD `lyhm khDw` l`byd Gyr lmjdy wGyr lmshrf. lyw twlstwy - rwy@ lb`th
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Leo Tolstoy |
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2a07a53
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En la vida solo hay dos verdaderas desgracias: el remordimiento de conciencia y la enfermedad. Y la felicidad es solamente la ausencia de estos dos males.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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939749c
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What is the matter with you?" asked Shcherbatsky. "Nothing much, but there is little to be happy about in this world." "Little? You'd better come with me to Paris instead of going to some Mulhausen or other. You'll see how jolly it will be!" "No, I have done with that; it is time for me to die." "That is a fine thing!" said Shcherbatsky, laughing. "I am only just beginning to live." "Yes, I thought so too till lately; but now I know that I ..
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death
humor
levin
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Leo Tolstoy |
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272406c
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These principles laid down as in variable rules: that one must pay a card sharper, but need not pay a tailor; that one must never tell a lie to a man, but one may to a woman; that one must never cheat any one, but one may a husband; that one must never pardon an insult, but one may give one and so on. These principles were possibly not reasonable and not good, but they were of unfailing certainty, and so long as he adhered to them, Vronsky ..
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tool
rationalization
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Leo Tolstoy |