Love of humanity

"It would be an interesting study (One man's life worth living) if we were to examine the greatest writers of all nations: which one, what did he love in his fellow man? Let us take from our own literature history Jókai, Arany. From the Germans, Goethe. From the English: Shakespeare, Dickens. From the French: Zola. From the Russians, only Dostoevsky. From Jókai's examination comes the stage hero of the romantic middle of the last century, who works with surprises, cuts his way out of everything, is handsome, strong, clever, lucky, but if you take him out of the light of the stage lamps: a puppet. Arany's examination reveals an educated peasant. Goethe's Faust is a clever, smarty, with courtly manners. Zola: a stallion dressed in various human clothes. Dostoyevsky: a cold snake's eye, but a heart that always bleeds warmly at the sight of the suffering. The writer who paints people thus loves and paints his own reflection best, most often, most perfectly."