Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina (1877)

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Anna spoke not only naturally and intelligently, but intelligently and casually, without attaching any value to her own thoughts, yet giving great value to the thoughts of the one she was talking to.

Leo Tolstoy
He liked fishing and seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation.

Leo Tolstoy
He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.

Leo Tolstoy
There are no conditions of life to which a man cannot get accustomed, especially if he sees them accepted by everyone about him.

Leo Tolstoy
Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?

Leo Tolstoy
You can't imagine what a pleasure this complete laziness is to me: not a thought in my brain- you might send a ball rolling through it!

Leo Tolstoy
God forgive me everything!' she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling...

Leo Tolstoy
She [Anna] was doing what she always did when she saw him [Vronsky]—comparing the image of him in her imagination (incomparably superior, and impossible in reality) with him as he was.

Leo Tolstoy
It will pass, it will all pass, we're going to be so happy! If our love could grow any stronger it would grow stronger because there is something horrifying in it,

Leo Tolstoy
Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it.

Leo Tolstoy
And whatever people might say about the time having come when young people must arrange their future for themselves, she could not believe it any more than she could believe that loaded pistols could ever be the best toys for five-year-old children.

Leo Tolstoy
But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.

Leo Tolstoy
Don't you know that you are all my life to me?...But peace I do not know, and can't give to you. My whole being, my love...yes! I cannot think about you and about myself separately. You and I are one to me. And I do not see before us the possibility of peace either for me or for you. I see the possibility of despair, misfortune...or of happiness-what happiness!...Is it impossible?" Vronksy

Leo Tolstoy