Anna Karenina

by Leo Tolstoy

Sometimes he would sit there for a good half-hour, gazing silently at the sleeping baby’s saffron-red, downy, puckered little face, and observing the movements of her wrinkled forehead and the backs of her chubby little hands with their curled fingers as they rubbed her little eyes and the bridge of her nose.

I feel like I’m flying head-first down into some kind of abyss, but I must not save myself. And I can’t.’

This fulfilment had shown him the error people invariably make when they imagine happiness to be the fulfilment of desires.

He was well acquainted with the way dilettantes (the cleverer they were, the worse it was) looked round the studios of contemporary artists with the sole objective of having the right to say that art was in decline, and that the more one looked at modern art, the more one saw how incomparable the great masters still were.

He knew that people used this word to imply a mechanical ability to paint or draw, quite independent of content. Often he noticed, as in the praise he had just received, that people contrasted technique to inner qualities, as though it were possible to paint something bad well.

of their lives. They both tried equally in later life

that the wealth of a country should increase in a consistent way, and, in particular, in such a way that other branches of wealth should not outstrip agriculture; that means of communication should be appropriate to the given state of agriculture, and that railways, which were the product of political rather than economic expediency, were premature while the land was being used incorrectly, since instead of boosting agriculture, as was expected of them, they had brought agriculture to a halt by outstripping it and promoting the development of industry and credit;

But it is hard for someone who is dissatisfied not to reproach another person, especially the person to whom they are closest, with being the cause of their dissatisfaction.

The sight of his brother and the proximity of death revived in Levin’s heart that feeling of horror at the combined unfathomability, proximity, and inevitability of death which had overwhelmed him that autumn evening when his brother came to visit.

He felt that because of this, precisely because his heart was torn to shreds, they would be merciless to him. He felt that people would destroy him as dogs savage an injured dog, howling in pain. Hiding his wounds from people was his only way of escaping from them, and he had unconsciously tried to do that for two days, but now he no longer felt

She was not only happy to see him, but would search his face for signs of the impression she

was making on him. She wanted him to find her whole person attractive, not just her words.

It is possible to sit crossed-legged in the same position for several hours on end if you know there is nothing to prevent you changing position; but if a person knows that he must sit like that with

crossed legs, he will experience cramps, and his legs will twitch and strain towards the place where he would like to stretch them. This was what Vronsky was experiencing with regard to society. Although he knew in the depths of his soul that society was closed to them, he was probing to see whether society would be different now and would receive them. But he very quickly realized that although society was open to him personally, it was closed to Anna.

As in the game of cat and mouse, the arms raised for him were immediately lo...

‘But where is he? How can he leave me alone with my suffering?’ she thought with a sudden feeling of reproach, forgetting it was she herself who had concealed everything concerning her son from him.

And she drank in those assurances of love he found so trite he was ashamed to utter them, and gradually calmed down.

‘Ah, it’s so strange how and when a man proposes . . . There is some kind of barrier, then suddenly it’s broken down,’

he experienced the radiant pleasure, still novel to him, of an intimacy with the woman he loved which was completely free of sensuality.

the kind of smile which said too much.

Was it not a feeling of youth he was experiencing now, when he came out to the edge of the wood again from the other side and saw against the bright light of the slanting rays of the sun the graceful figure of Varenka in her yellow dress, stepping lightly past the trunk of an old birch tree with her basket, and when the impression made by this vision of Varenka coalesced with the strikingly beautiful vision of the field of yellow oats bathed in the slanting rays, and beyond the field the distant old forest, speckled with yellow and melting into the blue distance? His heart missed a beat. A feeling of tender emotion came over him. He felt he had made up his mind.

They were both experiencing the same feeling, like that experienced by a schoolboy who has failed an examination, and has to remain in the same class or be expelled from the school altogether.

The main thing I need to feel is that I’m not to blame.’

such a mysterious event, that this fanciful knowledge of what would happen, and consequent preparation for it as if it were some ordinary thing manufactured by people, seemed outrageous and humiliating to him.

‘I don’t think anything,’ she said, ‘but I have always loved you, and if you love someone, you love the whole person, as they are, and not as you would like them to be.’

She particularly disliked seeing Princess Varvara, who forgave them everything for the sake of the comforts she enjoyed there.

‘You have so much influence over Anna, she is so fond of you,’ he said, ‘help me.’ Darya Alexandrovna looked searchingly yet timidly at his lively face, which kept coming fully, then partially, into the shaft of sunlight in the shadow of the lime trees

‘No one feels all the difficulty of Anna’s position more keenly and intensely than I do. And that is understandable if you can do me the honour of regarding me as a person with a heart. I am the cause of that position, and that is why I feel it.’

Of course,’ he said gloomily, ‘it is one of those Pharisaical cruelties of which only such heartless people are capable.

which is that everything he has

managed to arrange so well has cost him, the host, no effort at all, and happened all by itself. Darya Alexandrovna, however, knew that even porridge for the children’s breakfast does not happen by itself,

‘It’s typical of our Russian apathy,’ said Vronsky, pouring water from an ice-cold decanter into a slender glass on a stem, ‘not to feel the responsibilities our rights impose on us, and to deny those responsibilities.’

All that day she had felt she was acting in a theatre with actors who were better than she was, and that her bad acting was ruining the whole show.

She knew that with Dolly’s departure there would now be no one to stir up in her soul the feelings which this meeting had aroused in her. She found it painful for these feelings to be stirred up, but she nevertheless knew that this was the best part of her soul,