“I had begun to feel that life was a repetition of the same thing; that there was nothing new either in me or in him; and that, on the contrary, we kept going back as it were on what was old.”

Russian novelist and philosopher of the 19th century, Tolstoy is best known for his monumental works *War and Peace* and *Anna Karenina*, which explore moral and social questions with psychological depth. His later years were devoted to ethical and religious writings, advocating for nonviolence and a return to simple living.