Ivan Ilych saw that he was dying, and he was in continual despair. In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed… - Leo Tolstoy
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Ivan Ilych saw that he was dying, and he was in continual despair. In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it. The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter's Logic: "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal," had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius — man in the abstract — was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others.
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About
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevitch Tolstoy [Ле́в Никола́евич Толсто́й, usually rendered Leo Tolstoy, or sometimes Tolstoi] (9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910) was a Russian writer, philosopher and social activist (social critic), whose novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina are internationally praised classics of world literature. He was a major influence on the development of Christian anarchism and pacifism, contributing to such nonviolent resistance movements as those of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Bevel.
Biography information from
Wikiquote·
Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii (Public domain / CC0)
Also Known As
Pen Names:
Л. Н. Т.
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Л. Н.
Birth Name:
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy
Native Name:
Лев Никола́евич Толсто́й
Alternative Names:
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy
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Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910
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Tolstoĭ, Lev Nikolaevich, graf, 1828-1910
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Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoĭ
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Leo Tolstoi
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Tolstoĭ, Lev Nikolaevich, graf
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Tolstoy, Leo, graf
The positivist philosophy of Comte and the I doctrine deduced from it that humanity is an organism, and Darwin's doctrine of a law of the struggle for existence that is supposed to govern life, with the differentiation of various breeds of people which follows from it, and the anthropology, biology, and sociology of which people are now so fond-all have the same aim. These have all become favourite sciences because they serve to justify the way in which people free themselves from the human obligation to labour, while consuming the fruits of other people's labour.
It once occurred to a certain king, that if he always knew the right time to begin everything; if he knew who were the right people to listen to, and whom to avoid; and, above all, if he always knew what was the most important thing to do, he would never fail in anything he might undertake.
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