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ANNA KARENINA

Book by Leo Tolstoy · 5 quotes · Love, Anna Karenina, Life

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ANNA KARENINA Quotes

“When the peasants and their song had vanished from his sight and hearing, a heavy feeling of anguish at his loneliness, his bodily idleness, his hostility to this world, came over him...It was all drowned in the sea of cheerful common labor. God had given the day, God had given the strength. Both day and strength had been devoted to labour and in that lay the reward...Levin had often admired this life, had often experienced a feeling of envy for the people who lived this life, but that day for the first time...the thought came clearly to Levin that it was up to him to change that so burdensome, idle, artificial and individual life he lived into this laborious, pure and common, lovely life.”

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“The acquisition by dishonest means and cunning,' said Levin, feeling that he was incapable of clearly defining the borderline between honesty and dishonesty. 'Like the profits made by banks,' he went on. 'This is evil, I mean, the acquisition of enormous fortunes without work, as it used to be with the spirit monopolists. Only the form has changed. Le roi est mort, vive le roi! Hardly were the monopolies abolished before railways and banks appeared: just another way of making money without work.”

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“[...] but just as formerly these pursuits and ideas had seemed petty and insignificant in comparison with the darkness that overshadowed all existence, so now they seemed as petty and insignificant in comparison with the brilliant sunshine in which the future was bathed. He went on with his work but now he felt that the centre of gravity of his attention had shifted, making him look at his work quite differently and with greater clarity. Formerly this work had been an escape from life: he used to feel that without it life would be too gloomy. Now he needed it so that life might not be too uniformly bright.”

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“Death, the inevitable end of all, for the first time presented itself to him with irresistible force. And death, which was here in this loved brother, groaning half asleep and from habit calling without distinction on God and the devil, was not so remote as it had hitherto seemed to him. It was in himself too, he felt that. If not today, tomorrow, if not tomorrow, in thirty years, wasn’t it all the same! And what was this inevitable death—he did not know, had never thought about it, and what was more, had not the power, had not the courage to think about it. “I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had forgotten—death.”

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Book:ANNA KARENINA
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“Lewin sprach nur aus, was er in dieser letzten Zeit wirklich gedacht hat. Er sah überall nur den Tod oder spürte seine Nähe. Aber sein begonnenes Werk beschäftigte ihn deswegen nur um so mehr. Irgendwie musste man sein Leben fristen, bis der Tod kam. Alles schien ihm in Dunkel gehüllt, aber gerade dieses Dunkel ließ ihn empfinden, dass der einzige leitende Faden sein Werk war, und er klammerte sich mit seiner letzten Kraft an diesen Faden und hielt sich fest.”

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Book:ANNA KARENINA
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