“ The story of the life of Leo Tolstoy has yet to be written, if it ever can be written; but in its essentials it is the story of other great men who, through an inner awakening, have turned from the world to find their salvation in the life of the spirit. ”

“ His next work issued in 1867, "War and Peace" won him his great reputation as a novelist. The work deals with Russia's great struggle against Napolean Bonaparte.
Eight years later Tolstoy produced his even more celebrated "Anna Karenina," a study of one side of the marriage question, worked out in the novel to a conclusion of terrible tragedy. This work provoked discussion throughout the whole civilized world, and provoked Matthew Arnold to say : "This is less a work of art than a piece of life. But what it loses in art it gains in reality." ”

“ Although he had not yet come to the full acceptance of the theories in regard to socioligal subjects which he later advanced, he realized the necessity of living the life of the people if he hoped to benefit them, and accordingly, even with his increased means, the house, in which he wrote text books for the poor of the country and instructed classes of the peasantry of the neighborhood, was furnished with the rudest of chairs and tables, and the mode of life in his household was monastic in its simplicity. ”