As always hap­pens wher­ever peo­ple gather together, so at the lit­tle Ger­man spa the Shcherbatskys went to there took place the usual crys­tal­liza­tion as it were of soci­ety that assigns each one of its mem­bers a def­i­nite and unal­ter­able niche. As def­i­nitely and unal­ter­ably as a drop of water in the cold takes on a cer­tain form of snow crys­tal, so each new per­son arriv­ing at a spa instantly and with the same pre­ci­sion set­tles into his own spe­cial place.
AK P 226

Mlle. Varenka was not exactly past her first youth, but seemed a being beyond youthfulness—you might think her nine­teen years old, or thirty. If her fea­tures were ana­lyzed she was rather pret­tier than she was plain, in spite of her unhealthy com­plex­ion. She would also have had a good fig­ure if she hadn’t been far too dried up, with a head that was too large for her medium height; but she couldn’t have been attrac­tive to men. She was like a beau­ti­ful flower, which though its petals were all there had already with­ered and had no scent. Besides which she couldn’t have been attrac­tive to men because she didn’t have enough of what Kitty had too much of—a repressed flame of vital­ity and the aware­ness of her own attrac­tive­ness.
AK P 228

Levin looked on his half-brother as a man of enor­mous intel­lect and edu­ca­tion, who was noble in the lofti­est sense of the word and had the fit of being able to work for the com­mon wel­fare. But in the depths of his soul, the older he got and the bet­ter he came to know his brother, the more often the thought came into his head that this capac­ity of work­ing for the com­mon wel­fare, which he felt him­self to be com­pletely devoid of, might not be and was not so much a qual­ity as the con­trary, a lack of some­thing. It was not a lack of kind, hon­or­able, noble desires and tastes but of some vital force, of what is called heart, of that impulse that forces a man to choose, out of the count­less ways of life pre­sented to him, just one, and to desire that one alone. The more he came to know his brother the more he noticed that both Koznyshov and many oth­ers who worked for the com­mon wel­fare had not been brought by their hearts to this love of the com­mon wel­fare, but had intel­lec­tu­ally rea­soned that it was good to occupy one­self with it, and this was the only rea­son they did so. This con­vic­tion of Levin’s was strength­ened still fur­ther when he noticed that his brother did not take ques­tions about the gen­eral wel­fare or about the immor­tal­ity of the soul any more to heart than he did a game of chess, or the inge­nious con­struc­tion of a new machine.
AK P 255

NB: For a descrip­tion light­ing sim­i­lar ground, see Eric Hof­fer on his clumsy dock­yard mate.

When Anna, on her return from the races, had told him of her rela­tions with Vron­sky, burst into tears imme­di­ately after­ward and hid­den her face in her hands, Karenin, in spite of the fury this aroused in him, had felt at the same time an upsurge of the emo­tional dis­tur­bance tears always pro­duced in him. Know­ing this and know­ing that any expres­sion of his feel­ings at that moment would be out of keep­ing with the sit­u­a­tion, he tried to sup­press any dis­play of life, and so he nei­ther moved nor looked at her. This was what had brought about the pecu­liar, death­like expres­sion on his face that had so struck Anna.
His wife’s words, which con­firmed his worst sus­pi­cions, had given him bit­ter pain. This pain was height­ened still fur­ther by the strange feel­ing of phys­i­cal pity which had been evoked by her tears. But when he was left alone in the car­riage, to his own sur­prise and joy, he felt utterly lib­er­ated both from his pity and from the doubts and jeal­ous anguish that had been tor­ment­ing him lately.
He felt like some­one who has just had a tooth extracted after a long-drawn-out toothache. After dread­ful pain, and a sen­sa­tion of some­thing vast, larger than his head, being pulled out of his jaw, the suf­ferer sud­denly, still not believ­ing his own good for­tune, feels that the thing that has been poi­son­ing his life for so long and pre­oc­cu­py­ing his whole atten­tion, no longer exists, and that once again he can life, think, and be inter­ested in some­thing beside his tooth alone. this was Karenin’s feel­ing. The pain had been strange and ter­ri­ble, but now it was past; he felt that once again he could live and think about some­thing beside his wife.
AK P 297

Once he had decided in his own mind that he was happy in his love and that he was going to sac­ri­fice his ambi­tion to it—or at any rate had assumed this role—Vronsky could no longer feel either any jeal­ousy of Ser­pukhovsky or any annoy­ance with him for not hav­ing called on him first when he came to see the reg­i­ment. Ser­pukhovsky was a good friend and he looked for­ward to see­ing him.
…Vron­sky had not seen Ser­pukhovsky for three years. He was more mature and had grown whiskers, but he was still just as well built; he was strik­ing not so much by his looks as by the gen­tle­ness and nobil­ity of his face and bear­ing. The only change Vron­sky noticed in him was that serene unflag­ging radi­ance that set­tles on the face of peo­ple who are suc­cess­ful and are sure of everyone’s acknowl­edg­ing it. Vron­sky was famil­iar with this radi­ance and noticed it instantly in Ser­pukhovsky.
AK P 329

The night Levin had spent on the haystack did not pass with­out hav­ing some effect on him. The farm­ing he had been doing dis­gusted him now; he lost all inter­est in it. In spite of the splen­did har­vest he had never, at any rate he thought he had never had so many mishaps or so much il feel­ing between him and the peas­ants till this year, and the rea­son for these mishaps and this ill feel­ing now seemed to him com­pletely under­stand­able. The delight he had felt in the actual labor, because of his greater inti­macy with the peas­ants, the envy he felt for them and for their life, the desire to enter into that life, which dur­ing that night had no longer been a dream for him but an inten­tion whose details he had been think­ing through—all this had so changed his view of the way his farm was being run that he was quite inca­pable of tak­ing his for­mer inter­est in it any longer; he could not help but per­ceive the unpleas­ant­ness of his atti­tude toward the labor­ers, which was the basis of it all.…. But now he saw clearly…that the farm­ing he was doing was merely a cruel and stub­born con­test between him­self and the labor­ers, in which on one side—his side—there was a bit­ter, stren­u­ous, con­stant attempt to remodel every­thing accord­ing to a pat­tern accepted as the best, while on the other side there was the nat­ural order of things. In this strug­gle he saw that, with the great­est expen­di­ture of effort on his part, and with­out any effort even intended on the part of the oth­ers, the only thing accom­plished was that the farm­ing pleased no one, and first-rate tools, and first-rate cat­tle and land were ruined to no avail. But the main thing was that not only was the energy directed into this com­pletely wasted, but that now he could not help feel­ing, once the mean­ing of his farm­ing was laid bare, that the goal of his efforts was most unwor­thy. At bot­tom what was the strug­gle about? He was fight­ing for every penny (which he couldn’t help, since the moment he slack­ened his efforts he wouldn’t have enough money to pay the labor­ers off) while all they were fight­ing for was to work calmly and pleas­antly, that is, just as they were accus­tomed to. It was to his inter­est for each laborer to fin­ish as much work as pos­si­ble, while at the same time keep­ing his mind on it, try­ing not to break the win­now­ing machines, the horse rakes, and the thresh­ing machines, and pay­ing atten­tion to what he was doing. But what the laborer felt like doing was work­ing as agree­ably as pos­si­ble, with breaks for a rest, and above all in a care­free way, with­out wor­ry­ing or think­ing. AK P 342–343

I cant ask [Kitty] to marry me just because she can’t marry the man she wanted, he said to him­self. The thought of this made him cold and hos­tile toward her. I’ll be inca­pable of speak­ing to her with­out feel­ing reproach­ful, of look­ing at her with­out mal­ice, and she’ll only grow to hate me even more—and quite right too. Besides, after what Dolly said to me how can I visit them now? How can I help but show that I know what she told me? And to go there mag­nan­i­mously to for­give her, pity her! I’d be play­ing the role in front of her of some­one who for­gives her and hon­ors her with his love!
…Why Did Dolly tell me that? I might have been able to see her by acci­dent; then every­thing would have hap­pened by itself, but now it’s impos­si­ble, impossible!

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