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LTLeo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Life dates: 1828 AD — 1910 AD

Tolstoy’s scenes give memorable ideas to an atmosphere or a speaker. Read the Rostov celebration and Pierre’s encounter with a Mason in the Maude translation, keeping their voices distinct from direct authorial advice.

▷ Play this voiceSearch these words ↗Place in time ↗lovetruthjusticelifeknowledgehappinesspeacenature

Life and writing

The catalogue identifies Leo Tolstoy and gives his lifetime as 1828–1910. It names Aylmer Maude and Louise Maude as translators of this English reading edition. The linked text confirms their translation credit and organises the narrative into books with historical year labels. Those labels locate the fictional setting; they do not date the archive extracts. An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger receive digital credits. The checked record does not identify its underlying print publisher, and the catalogue HTML ISBN belongs to this electronic edition rather than an original Russian printing.

Book Four, Chapter XI gives the atmosphere of the Rostov holiday gathering a voice urging happiness and love. It is the spirit of the place in the narrator’s description, not a sentence spoken directly by Tolstoy to the reader. Book Five, Chapter II places the image of truth built stone by stone in a Mason’s conversation with Pierre, within a religious argument. Both complete selected English extracts match the linked Maude translation under limited normalization. Neither match independently authenticates other Tolstoy-labelled records or proves their original translation history.

Reading this voice

Read Book Four, Chapter XI beside Book Five, Chapter II. Separate the voice given to a festive atmosphere from the Mason’s religious address to Pierre. The complete selected English extracts match the Maude text under punctuation, case and spacing comparison. These scenes supply local context, not a universal instruction or a claim that every archive translation used this edition.

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Quotations and sayings

02c. 1869 AD
How good is it to remember one's insignificance: that of a man among billions of men, of an animal amid billions of animals; and one's abode, the earth, a little grain of sand in comparison with Sirius and others, and one's life span in comparison with billions on billions of ages. There is only one significance, you are a worker. The assignment is inscribed in your reason and heart and expressed clearly and comprehensibly by the best among the beings similar to you. The reward for doing the assignment is immediately within you. But what the significance of the assignment is or of its completion, that you are not given to know, nor do you need to know it. It is good enough as it is. What else could you desire?
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12c. 1869 AD
I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books , music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?
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