“I understand fees in the case of a work like your biography (of Tolstoi), but fees to writers for their artistic work always seemed strange and wrong to me. The man wrote and enjoyed writing, and suddenly for that enjoyment he asks five hundred roubles per printed sheet!” ...
Tolstoi said:
“I became more and more convinced that a sensible man is to be known by his humility. Conceit is incompatible with understanding.”
Of conceit Tolstoi said a long time ago in my presence:
“Every man can be seen as a fraction, whose numerator is his actual qualities, and its denominator his opinion of himself. The greater the denominator the less is the absolute quantity of the fraction.”
1907
September 7th. Tolstoi went to-day to Mme. Zveginzev to ask the police inspector, who lives on her estate, to release from prison the house-painter, Ivan Grigorevich; and also to thank her for the peaches she had sent him.