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Quote by Leo Tolstoy
English (Source)
One of the most widespread and common misconceptions is that everyone has their own distinct characteristics: there are good and bad people, smart and stupid, strong and powerless, and the rest. People aren't like that. We can say about anyone that they are more good than bad, more smart than stupid, more powerful than weak, or vice versa; but it cannot be true to say of one man that he is good or wise, and of another that he is wicked or foolish. However, this is how we usually divide people, and it is completely wrong. People are like rivers: water is water in all of them, one and the same, but each river is narrow in one place, swift in another, sometimes wide, sometimes quiet, sometimes clear, sometimes cold, sometimes cloudy, sometimes lukewarm. It's the same with people. Everyone carries within himself the germs of all human qualities, sometimes one manifests in him, sometimes the other, and sometimes he does not resemble himself at all, although at the same time he remains himself.