"When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be."
"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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Source: Leo Tolstoy (2010). “The Death of Ivan Ilych: English-Russian Parallel Text Edition”, p.70, Lulu.com
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"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."
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