“Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.”

— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1869), Book XV, Ch. 1

About Leo Tolstoy

1828 – 1910

Russian novelist and moral philosopher, author of 'War and Peace' and 'Anna Karenina'.

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

“Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.”

“Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.”

“Grief may be joy misunderstood; Only the Good discerns the good.”

“Happiness is lost by criticizing it; sorrow by accepting it.”

“Every joy that some experience is paid for by the sorrow of others.”

“Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.”

“Death, like generation, is a secret of Nature.”

“No hour of life is lost that is spent in the saddle.”