★★★★★ | Literature | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
A beautiful, wise book touching so many themes: true love, societal pressures, women’s rights, nobility excesses, religious zealotry, jealousy, the fruitless search for the meaning of life, angst over landowner privilege, thinking vs. feeling/living, capitalism vs. communism. Reading Tolstoy is the study of life.
Highlights
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
The main qualities that had earned him this universal respect in the service were, first, an extreme indulgence towards people, based on his awareness of his own shortcomings; second, a perfect liberalism, not the sort he read about in the newspapers, but the sort he had in his blood, which made him treat all people, whatever their rank or status, in a perfectly equal and identical way; and, third – most important – a perfect indifference to the business he was occupied with, owing to which he never got carried away and never made mistakes.
Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was unpleasant for her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people’s lives. She wanted too much to live herself.
Alexei Alexandrovich did not miss anything that caused a stir in that area, and considered it his duty to read everything. She knew that in the areas of politics, philosophy and theology, Alexei Alexandrovich doubted or searched; but in questions of art and poetry, and especially music, of which he lacked all understanding, he had the most definite and firm opinions.
It provoked in Vronsky and Anna a feeling like that of a mariner who can see by his compass that the direction in which he is swiftly moving diverges widely from his proper course, but that he is powerless to stop the movement which every moment takes him further and further from the right direction, and that to admit the deviation to himself is the same as admitting disaster.
From Varenka she understood that you had only to forget yourself and love others and you would be calm, happy and beautiful.
Konstantin Levin did not like talking or hearing about the beauty of nature. For him words took away the beauty of what he saw.
Hard as Stepan Arkadyich tried to be a solicitous father and husband, he never could remember that he had a wife and children.
Shamming in anything at all can deceive the most intelligent, perceptive person; but the most limited child will recognize it and feel aversion, no matter how artfully it is concealed.
He was sitting on his bed in the dark, crouching, hugging his knees and thinking, holding his breath from the strain of it. But the more he strained to think, the clearer it became to him that it was undoubtedly so, that he had actually forgotten, overlooked in his life one small circumstance – that death would come and everything would end, that it was not worth starting anything and that nothing could possibly be done about it. Yes, it was terrible, but it was so.
The church became so still that the dripping of wax could be heard.
To the question whether she had children, the beautiful young woman had cheerfully replied: ‘I had one girl, but God freed me, I buried her during Lent.’ ‘And aren’t you very sorry about her?’ Darya Alexandrovna had asked. ‘Why be sorry? The old man has lots of grandchildren. Nothing but trouble. No work, no nothing. Just bondage.’ This answer had seemed repulsive to Darya Alexandrovna, despite the young woman’s good-natured prettiness, but now she inadvertently recalled those words. Cynical as they were, there was some truth in them.
‘In infinite time, in the infinity of matter, in infinite space, a bubble-organism separates itself, and that bubble holds out for a while and then bursts, and that bubble is me.’