Ernest Hemingway in The New Yorker (13 May 1950)
“
I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant. I've fought two draws with Mr. Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody's going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I'm crazy or I keep getting better.
— Ernest Hemingway
What It Means
This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant. I've fought two draws with Mr. Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody's going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I'm crazy or I keep getting better." in the context of "Ernest Hemingway in The New Yorker (13 May 1950)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.
Source: Wikiquote: "Leo Tolstoy" (Quotes about Tolstoy: Sorted alphabetically by author or source)
The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
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About Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevitch Tolstoy Ле́в Никола́евич Толсто́й, usually rendered Leo Tolstoy, or sometimes Tolstoi (9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910) was a Russian writer, philosopher and social activist (social critic), whose novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina are internationally praised classics of world literature. He was a major influence on the development of Christian anarchism and pacifism, contributing to such nonviolent resistance movements as those of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Bevel.
About Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevitch Tolstoy Ле́в Никола́евич Толсто́й, usually rendered Leo Tolstoy, or sometimes Tolstoi (9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910) was a Russian writer, philosopher and social activist (social critic), whose novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina are internationally praised classics of world literature. He was a major influence on the development of Christian anarchism and pacifism, contributing to such nonviolent resistance movements as those of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Bevel.
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