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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About Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace.

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