"When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be."
"When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians produce a saving conception of 'greatness.' 'Greatness,' it seems, excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the 'great' man nothing is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a 'great' man can be blamed."
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Source: Leo Tolstoy (2016). “War and Peace”, p.1125, First Avenue Editions
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