"When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be."
"The best generals I have known were... stupid or absent-minded men. Not only does a good army commander not need any special qualities, on the contrary he needs the absence of the highest and best human attributes - love, poetry, tenderness, and philosophic inquiring doubt. He should be limited, firmly convinced that what he is doing is very important (otherwise he will not have sufficient patience), and only then will he be a brave leader. God forbid that he should be humane, should love, or pity, or think of what is just and unjust."
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Source: War and Peace bk. 9, ch. 11 (1865 - 1869) (translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude)
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