“And Levin remembered a scene he had lately witnessed between Dolly and her children. The children, left to themselves, had begun cooking raspberries over the candles and squirting milk into each other's mouths with a syringe. Their mother, catching them at these pranks, began reminding them in Levin's presence of the trouble their mischief gave to the grown-up people, and that this trouble was all for their sake, and that if they smashed the cups they would have nothing to drink their tea out of, and that if they wasted the milk, they would have nothing to eat, and die of hunger.

And Levin had been struck by the passive, weary incredulity with which the children heard what their mother said to them. They were simply annoyed that their amusing play had been interrupted, and did not believe a word of what their mother was saying. They could not believe it indeed, for they could not take in the immensity of all they habitually enjoyed, and so could not conceive that what they were destroying was the very thing they lived by”

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

“He walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking.”

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

“Levin said what he had genuinely been thinking of late. He saw nothing but death or the advance toward death in everything. But his cherished scheme only engrossed him all 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.”

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

“...my despair reached such a height that I could do nothing but think of the horrible condition in which I found myself.... I saw only one thing--Death. Everything else was a lie.”

My Confession, Leo Tolstoy Recommended by Dominique.

“La mort est secourable et la mort est tranquille.
Ah! contre les douleurs il n'ya a pas d'autre asile.

(Death is rescue and death is peace.
Ah! Against sorrow there is no other refuge.)”

War And Peace, Leo Tolstoy