Thursday, May 15, 2008

Tolstoy on Danger... and Frivolity

15 May 2008

Without further comment:

"With the enemy's approach to Moscow, the Muscovites' view of their situation did not
grow more serious but on the contrary became even more frivolous, as always happens with people who see a great danger approaching.

"At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger, since it is not in man's power to foresee everything and avert the general course of events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes, and to think about what is pleasant."

---Leo Tolstoy, "War and Peace"
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