Leo Tolstoy shortly before his 80th birthday
courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Leo Tolstoy, a Russian writer,  is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time.

Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, he is best known for the novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877), often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction.

One of his statements:

“Art is transferring feeling from one heart to another.”