Welcome to Translation Comparison!
Translation Comparison
Quote by Leo Tolstoy
English (Source)
I have no way of knowing anything directly about what it was like when I was gone, I have no way of knowing what my life was like in my mother's womb and in my early childhood, I know nothing directly of what happened to me during sleep or self-forgetfulness. All this wouldn't exist if it weren't for people like me, from whom I learn what they knew about the life unknown to me about what precedes it. All this is the result of my communication with other people, who through their stories give me an image of what happened to me and up to me. These testimonies are necessary only for the external chaining of phenomena, but in themselves they are not part of my life, they are not necessary for me, and they are often inaccurate, but their accuracy or inaccuracy is of no importance to me. What matters to me, and constitutes my true life, is all that I have known directly and that has been revealed to my consciousness through the thoughts of conscious beings who have conversed with me in this life, or who lived thousands of years ago and expressed in words that hid murky in my consciousness and, receiving the form of the expression, became part of it. Thus the thoughts of Buddha, Kant, Christ, Amiel and others are part of my life, while a large part of my youthful life and the lives of the people who live with me and talk to me day by day are completely given oblivion.