The more mental effort he made the clearer he saw that it was undoubtedly so: that he had really forgotten and overlooked one little circumstance in life - that Death would come and end everything, so that it was useless to begin anything, and that there was no help for it, Yes it was terrible but true

The Works of Leo Tolstoy...: Anna Karénina, tr. by Louise and Aylmer Maude (ed. 1937)