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If she were free to-day, I would stretch my hands out for her without hesitation; if she had never been married, who knows?—I am ashamed of the thought, and yet it may be that she would not be so desirable. Most likely, judging by the past, I should have gone on watching her, watching my own feelings, until somebody else carried her off; but I prefer not to think of it, because it makes me inclined to swear.

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank
Here will we sit & let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness & the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony
Sit, Jessica.Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins
Such harmony is in immortal souls

[...] a man in love can find food for his feelings even in what tells against the loved woman.

[...] a woman is not in reality what she appears to people in general, but such as the man who loves sees her; therefore her absolute excellence is in proportion to the power of love she inspires.

[...] in the name of this excellence the woman ought to give her heart to him who loves her most.

I live as if in mid air, with no firm hold upon the earth. [...] I brought with me into the world a bright intellect, a luxuriant organism,& vital powers of no mean degree. These forces had to find an outlet,& they could find it only in the love for a woman. There remained nothing else for me. My whole misfortune is that,as a child of a diseased civilization,I grew up crooked;therefore love, too, came to me crooked

[...] But matrimony is one thing, and continual love-making another.

What is the difference between them?

The difference is obvious, sir. We are like ants constructing an ant-hill. We have our work to do, and not much time to spare for love and women. That is all very well for those who cannot work, or who do not want to do anything.

Death does not seem to make much impression upon the rustic mind; perhaps they regard it in the light of an everlasting holiday. As we stood by the open grave, I noticed their faces following the ceremony with concentrated attention and curiosity; but I saw no trace of thoughtfulness or reflection at the inexorable end, after which begins the great, terrible Unknown.

Aniela has so much intelligence of heart, so much goodness and sensibility, that she cannot look upon our present position with indifference, and has not worldly experience enough to preserve an appearance of ease. This practice comes with later years, when the live spring of feelings begins to dry up and the mind acquires a certain conventionality.

I am not so conceited as to think that no woman could resist me, but I am of the opinion that no woman can resist the man she truly loves. It is a trite saying that "a fortress besieged is a fortress surrendered," but there is some truth in it when adapted to woman, especially when behind the entrenchment of her virtues she harbors such a traitor as her own heart.

He will speak to her with a certain authority,gently & persuasively; he will convince her that a woman, however wounded her heart may be, has no right to marry the man she does not love; that doing so she acts dishonestly,& is not true to herself; that, likewise, she has no right to throw over the man she loves,because in an access of jealousy he wrote a letter he repents of now from the veriest depths of his heart

In these times of overwrought nerves, it is not only women that are like sensitive plants. A rough touch, and, the soul shrinks, folds itself up, maybe forever. I know it is foolish, even wrong, but I cannot help it. To change myself I should have to order at an anatomist's a new set of nerves,and keep those I have for special occasions. No one,not even Pani Sniatynski, can judge me more severely than I judge myself.

A week has passed. I have not written because I feel half suffocated, torn by doubts, sorrow, and anxiety. Aniela has never been, and is not indifferent to me. The words of Hamlet recur to me:

  "I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers
  Could not, with all their quantity of love,
  Make up my sum."

I should only have to change the outcry:

"I loved Aniela; forty thousand Lauras could not make up my sum.”

On the altar of my Greek temple there is a marble goddess; but my Gothic shrine is empty. I have found something bordering upon the perfect,& I defend myself from a suspicion that this perfection throws a big shadow. I thought once that Goethe's words, You shall be like unto gods & beasts, embraced all life & were the highest expression of his wisdom;now,when I follow the commandment,I feel that he omitted the angel

As far as beauty goes she is the highest expression of whatever the most exalted imagination is able to conceive. She is a Phryne. It would turn most men's heads to see her in a tight-fitting riding-habit that shows the outline of her figure as beautiful as that of a statue. In the boat, reading Dante, she looked like a Sybil, and one could understand a Nero's sacrilegious passion. Hers is an almost baleful beauty.

Mrs. Davis, to whom, during our causerie on the moonlit terrace, I unfolded my view as to the all-powerfulness of love, more or less as I have written it down, called me Anacreon, and advised me to crown my head with vine leaves, and then said more soberly, "If such be your opinions, why play the part of pessimist? Belief in such a deity ought to make any man happy.

When I think I see nothing but contradictions in us.We consider ourselves the outcome & highest rung of civilization,& yet have lost faith in ourselves;only the most foolish believe in our raison d'être.We look out instinctively for places of enjoyment,gayety,& happiness,& yet we do not believe in happiness.Though our pessimism be wan & ephemeral as the clouds from our Havanas,it obscures our view of wider horizons

“Good-morning, you mean, not good-night,—good-morning."

Either I am blind and deaf or her eyes and voice expressed: "I love you, I love you."

I do the same—almost.

“The stray bird," says the poet Slowacki, "comes back to his haven of rest and peace all the more eagerly after the lonesomeness of his stormy flight. Nothing takes so firm a hold upon a man's heart as the consciousness that he is loved.”

Of the many problems of life, I have not solved one. I am nothing; scepticism is sapping my whole system; I am not happy, and am very tired. He, with less knowledge than I, does useful work, has a good and handsome wife, the rogue! and his very philosophical principles, adapted to life, help to make him happy. No, it must be acknowledged, it is I who am the more foolish of the two.

I wished also to look at her from a distance. Decidedly she is my type. Women of that kind have a special attraction for me. Oh, if only she were thirty, and not a girl they expect me to marry!

I noticed that the arm which rested on mine had a slightly dusky shade, covered as it was with a light down. And yet she could not be called a brunette. Her hair is a light brown with a gleam of bronze. Her eyes are light too, but appear dark, shaded as they are by long eyelashes; the eyebrows, on the contrary, are dark and very pretty.

But I am like the chickens when asked in what sauce they would like to be served; I do not want to be dished up at all.
Now, to return to my grievance against you, dear ladies, you are before everything in love with love, and not with the lover. Every one of you is a queen in her own rights, and in this you differ from other women; every one seems to confer a boon and a favor in permitting herself to be loved;

“It seems to me you are very much like the fox looking at the dovecote. He does not like, and it makes him wroth, to see the doves dwelling so high, and unlike the hens, always on the wing. All you have said tells in favor of Polish women."

"How do you make that out?"

"The more a Polish woman seems intolerable as somebody else's wife, the more desirable she is to have for one's own.”

I like well-bred people,people with brains and nerves,& look for them where they are most readily found.I like them as I like works of art, fine scenery,& beautiful women.From an aesthetic point of view,I possess refined nerves,too refined,perhaps,owing to my early training & a naturally impressionable temperament.This aesthetic sensitiveness gives me as many delights as torments,& renders me one great service:

I thought about that "improductivité Slave" all night. He had his wits about him who summed the thing up in two words. There is something in us,—an incapacity to give forth all that is in us. One might say, God has given us bow and arrow, but refused us the power to string the bow and send the arrow straight to its aim

That I did not become an artist is owing, may be, to a lack of gifts that way,—although my drawing and music masters opined differently; but how was it that neither my father nor the priest was able to imbue me with that love of art for art's sake? Have I a feeling for art? Yes. Is art a necessity of my life? Yes, again. But they loved it; I only feel it as a dilettante;

My name is Leon...,& I come from a wealthy family which has been able to preserve its fortune.As to myself I shall not increase it,& at the same time I am not likely to squander it.My position is such that there is no necessity for me to enter into competition with struggling humanity.As to expensive & ruinous pleasures,I am a sceptic who knows how much they are worth,or rather,knows that they are not worth anything

“A man who leaves memoirs, whether well or badly written, provided they be sincere, renders a service to future psychologists and writers, giving them not only a faithful picture of the times, but likewise human documents that can be relied upon.”

One of the two things had happened—either she had fallen in love with Simonson and did not wish his sacrifice, which weighed so heavily on him, or she was still in love with Nekhludoff and renounced him for his own good, burning all bridges behind her, and throwing her fortunes in the same scale with those of Simonson. Nekhludoff understood it, and felt ashamed.

"If you are in love with him," he said.”

What do you think of him? said Maria Pablovna. In love,& earnestly in love! I never thought that Vladimir Simonson could fall in love in such a very stupid, childish fashion. It is remarkable,& to tell the truth, sad, she concluded,sighing.

But Katia? How do you think she will take it? asked Nekhludoff.

She? You see, notwithstanding her past, she is naturally of a most moral character.& her feelings are so refined

& it was this man who,falling in love with Katiousha,had a decisive influence over her.With the instincts of a woman,Maslova soon discovered,& the consciousness that she could arouse the feeling of love in such a remarkable man raised her in her own estimation.Nekhludoff offered to marry her out of magnanimity,& the obligation for the past,but Simonson loved her as she was now,&loved her simply because he loved her