“‘Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be. And if you don’t love me any more, it would be better and more honest to say so.'”
—from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Category: Quite Quotable (Page 10 of 23)
[speaking about Anna Karenina]
“”What a marvelous, sweet and unhappy woman!’ he was thinking, as he stepped out into the frosty air with Stepan Arkadyevitch.
‘Well, didn’t I tell you?’ said Stephan Arkadyevitch, seeing that Levin had been completely won over.
‘Yes,’ said Levin dreamily, ‘an extraordinary woman! It’s not her cleverness, but she has such wonderful depth of feeling. I’m awfully sorry for her!'”
—from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
“‘What doubt can you have of the Creator when you behold His creation?’ the priest went on in the rapid customary jargon. ‘Who has decked the heavenly firmament with its lights? Who has clothed the earth in its beauty? How explain it without the creator?’ he said, looking inquiringly at Levin.”
—from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
“The Karenins, husband and wife, continued living in the same house, met every day, but were complete strangers to one another. Alexey Alexandrovitch made it a rule to see his wife every day, so that the servants might have no grounds for suppositions, but avoided dining at home. Vronsky was never at Alexey Alexandrovitch’s house, but Anna saw him away from home, and her husband was aware of it.”
—from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
“Levin said what he had genuinely been thinking of late. He saw nothing but death or the advance towards death in everything. But his cherished scheme only engrossed him the more. Life had to be got through somehow till death did come. Darkness had fallen upon everything for him; but just because of this darkness he felt that the one guiding clue in the darkness was his work, and he clutched it and clung to it with all his strength.”
—from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
—from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
“‘There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die . . . that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
Live, then, and be happy . . . and never forget, that until the day when God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words,—“Wait and hope.”‘”
—from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
“‘I say it with some pride, Mercédès—God required me, and I lived. Examine the past and the present, and endeavor to pierce futurity, and then say whether I am not a Divine instrument. The most dreadful misfortunes, the most frightful sufferings, the abandonment of all those who loved me, the persecution of those who did not know me, formed the trials of my youth; when suddenly, from captivity, solitude, misery, I was restored to light and liberty, and became the possessor of a fortune so brilliant, so unbounded, so unheard-of, that I must have been blind not to be conscious that God had endowed me with it to work out his own great designs. From that time I viewed this fortune as confided to me for a particular purpose. Not a thought was given to a life which you once, Mercédès, had the power to render blissful,—not one hour of peaceful calm was mine, but I felt myself driven on like an exterminating angel. Like those adventurous captains about to embark on some enterprise full of danger, I laid in my provisions, I loaded my arms, I collected every means of attack and defence; I inured my body to the most violent exercises, my soul to the bitterest trials; I taught my arm to slay, my eyes to behold excruciating sufferings, and my mouth to smile at the most horrid spectacles. From good-natured, confiding, and forgiving, I became revengeful, cunning, and wicked, or rather immovable as fate. Then I launched out into the path that was opened to me; I overcame every obstacle and reached the goal. But woe to those who met me in my career.'”
—from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
“‘ . . . until now, no man has found himself in a position similar to mine. The dominions of kings are limited, either by mountains or rivers, or a change of manners, or an alteration of language. My kingdom is bounded only by the world, for I am neither an Italian, nor a Frenchman, nor a Hindoo, nor an American, nor a Spaniard. I am a cosmopolite. No country can say it saw my birth. God alone knows what country will see me die . . . You may, therefore, comprehend, that being of no country, asking no protection from any government, acknowledging no man as my brother, not one of the scruples that arrest the powerful, or the obstacles which paralyse the weak, paralyse or arrest me. I have only two adversaries—I will not say two conquerors, for with perseverance I subdue even them, though they are time and distance. There is a third, and the most terrible—that is my condition as a mortal being. This alone can stop me in my onward career, and before I have attained the goal at which I aim, for all the rest I have calculated. What men call the chances of fate, namely, ruin, change, circumstances—I have anticipated them all, and if any of these should overtake me, yet they will not overwhelm me. Unless I die, I shall always be what I am . . .’”
—from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
(Edmond Dantès speaking to the Abbè Faria)
“‘God deems it right to take from me even what you call my devotion to you. I have promised you to remain for ever with you, and now I could not break my promise if I would. I shall no more have the treasure than you, and neither of us will quit this prison. But my real treasure is not that, my dear friend, which awaits me beneath the somber rocks of Monte Cristo, but it is your presence, our living together five or six hours a day, in spite of our gaolers; it is those rays of intelligence you have elicited from my brain, the languages you have implanted in my memory, and which spring there with all their philological ramifications. These different sciences that you have made so easy to me by the depth of the knowledge you possess of them, and the clearness of the principles to which you have reduced them,—this is my treasure, my beloved friend, and with this you have made me rich and happy . . . To have you as long as possible near me, to hear your eloquent voice which I trust embellishes my mind, strengthens my soul, and makes my whole frame capable of great and terrible things, if I should ever be free, so fills my whole existence, that the despair to which I was just on the point of yielding when I knew you, has no longer any hold over me: and this—this is my fortune—not chimerical but actual. I owe you my real good, my present happiness; and all the sovereigns of the earth, were they Caesar Borgias, could not deprive me of this.'”
—from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
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