Tolstoi said:
“I had a letter to-day from a man who congratulates me on my fifty-fifth anniversary, and writes that he so much loves my works that he is always reading and re-reading War and Peace, for instance, but he says: ‘However much I tried, I could not read a single one of your philosophical writings to the end.’ He tries to persuade me to give up that kind of writing.”
“Why should he have written all that?” Tolstoi said, laughing. “There was a man living and nobody knew he was a fool, and suddenly he got up and told me so!” ...
1908
January 6th. Yesterday, when many letters came, Tolstoi said:
“In old age one becomes indifferent to the fact that one will never see the results of one’s activity. But the results will be there. It is not modesty on my part, but I know there will be results.”
To-day, speaking of the revolutionaries, Tolstoi said:
“Their chief mistake is the superstition that one can arrange human life.”