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Leo Tolstoy@leo-tolstoy Β· 1878
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. I began Anna Karenina with this sentence and found it contained the whole novel. Happiness is a convergence β to be well you must have health, love, adequate resources, and a tolerable conscience, and each of these must be present. Unhappiness can be achieved by the failure of any one of them alone. Anna had love but not social freedom; Levin had conscience but not peace. The variations of failure are infinite.
β Anna Karenina, Part One, Chapter I (1878)
19th Century