Reading Highlights

lived in a house in Gorizia

‘A peasant who can read and write is far worse as a labourer.

‘The principal task of philosophy has always, in all ages, been to find the necessary connection existing between personal and general interests.

not a lack of kindly honesty and noble desires and tastes, but a lack of the power of living, of what is called heart—the aspiration which makes a man choose one out of all the innumerable paths of life that present themselves, and desire that alone.

‘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!’

‘Il ne faut jamais rien outrer,’

‘Where is the humiliation? You did not do anything wrong?’

She was not interested in the people she knew, for she felt that nothing new would come from them.

‘After all, how inclined we all are to these cruel spectacles,’

la pointe de la sauce.

The monstrous sports of prize-fighting, or the Spanish bullfights, are indications of barbarism, but specialized sport is a sign of progress.’

Sport in my opinion has great value, but we, as usual, see only what is most external.’

She said all this lightly, rapidly, and with peculiarly sparkling eyes; but Karenin did not now attach any importance to this tone of hers. He only heard her words, and gave them only their direct meaning. And he answered simply, though jokingly. In all this conversation nothing particular passed, but never afterwards could Anna recall this short scene without being tormented by shame.

But the memory of that steeplechase long remained the most painful and distressing memory of his life.

without love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us, for there would be no life,’

Vronsky raised his head in amazement and looked as he knew how to, not into the Englishman’s eyes but at his forehead, surprised at the boldness of the question.

pleasure lies not in discovering truth but in seeking it.’

cigar is such a ... not exactly a

pleasure, but the crown and sign of pleasure.

He now felt like a man who on coming home finds his house locked against him.

‘I think ... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.’

They had to return to the one sure and never-failing resource—slander.

‘entendons nous!’

As if tears were the necessary lubricant without which the machine of mutual confidence could not work properly between the sisters, after having had a cry they started talking of indifferent matters, and in so doing understood one another.

such horrid, ignoble people.’

To speak of it would be to give it an importance that does not belong to it.’

That is why so many prefer women of the demi-monde. If you don’t succeed in that case it only shows that you have not enough money, but in this case one’s pride is in the balance.

vous filez le parfait amour.

‘Yes, there is something strange, satanic, and enchanting about her,’

He realized that this Association was merely an anchor to save his brother from self-contempt.

‘You understood and understand me. Good-bye, my sweet one!’

There are people who when they meet a rival, no matter in what, at once shut their eyes to everything good in him and see only the bad. There are others who on the contrary try to discern in a lucky rival the qualities which have enabled him to succeed, and with aching hearts seek only the good in him.

Plato defines in his “Symposium”—both kinds of love serve as a touchstone for men. Some men understand only the one, some only the other. Those who understand only the non-platonic love need not speak of tragedy. For such love there can be no tragedy. “Thank you kindly for the pleasure, good-bye,” and that’s the whole tragedy. And for the platonic love there can be no tragedy either, because there everything is clear and pure, because ...’

women are the pivot on which everything turns!

He could find no answer, except life’s usual answer to the most complex and insoluble questions. That answer is: live in the needs of the day, that is, find forgetfulness.

Everything was lit up by her. She was the smile that brightened everything around.

He stepped down, avoiding any long look at her as one avoids long looks at the sun, but seeing her as one sees the sun, without looking.

He understood that feeling of Levin’s so well, knew that for Levin all the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class included all the girls in the world except her, and they had all the usual human failings and were very ordinary girls; while the other class—herself alone—had no weaknesses and was superior to all humanity.

Himmlisch ist’s, wenn ich bezwungen Meine irdische Begier; Aber doch wenn’s nicht gelungen Hatt’ich auch recht hübsch Plaisir!’

‘Consequently, if my senses are destroyed, if my body dies, no further existence is possible?’

All the variety, charm and beauty of life are made up of light and shade.’

“Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and agonies of the soul, but all the time his most tormenting tragedy has been, is, and will always be, the tragedy of the bedroom.” —Leo Tolstoy

ALL HAPPY families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

religion was only good as a check on the more barbarous portion of the population;

Alexis Alexandrovich Karenin, his sister Anna’s husband, who held one of the most important positions in the Ministry to which that Moscow Board belonged.

The chief qualities that had won him this general respect in his Office were, first, his extreme leniency, founded on a consciousness of his own defects; secondly, his true Liberalism—not that of which he read in his paper, but that which was in his blood and made him treat all men alike whatever their rank or official position; thirdly and chiefly, his complete indifference to the business he was engaged on, in consequence of which he was never carried away by enthusiasm and never made mistakes.

Each thought that his own way of living was real life, and that the life of his friend was—illusion.

The palm up cue is a signal of openness and trust. It’s a high warmth cue, best used when trying to get people to be more collaborative and open.

highly charismatic, likable, compelling people demonstrate a special blend of two specific traits: warmth and competence.

You can have the best content in the world, but if it’s not shared with the right charisma cues, it doesn’t land.

If you can’t showcase your warmth, people won’t believe in your competence.

Balance warmth and competence cues to be charismatic.

But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.’ Don’t you see?”

I know why I’m going—and, Tom, I know where I’m going, and I am content.”

Go through the motions, Adam.” “What motions?” “Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.”

It was easy to guide a man’s strength where it was impossible to resist him.

if you can bring yourself to face not shadows but real death, described and recognizable, by bullet or saber, arrow or lance, then you need never be afraid again,

Always you must leave a man one escape before death.

installed justly to make little boys feel littler and stupid boys aware of their stupidity;

When a child first catches adults out—when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just—his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child’s world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.

And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.

You can boast about anything if it’s all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.

scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away.

It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment.

“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.”

No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.

rent asunder by dissension.

I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.

I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought.

It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.

Most people are heartless about turtles because a turtle's heart will beat for hours after he has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too and my feet and hands are like theirs.

The thousand times that he had proved it meant nothing. Now he was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it.

No one should be alone in their old age, he thought. But it is unavoidable.

To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean by the frailty of its foam.

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little, “Wherefore are you slow and halting?”

But you who are strong and swift, see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness.

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts; And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime. And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered. For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.

When you part from your friend, you grieve not; For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.

If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.

Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape. These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling. And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light. And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.

For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their own pride?

Is not remorse the justice which is administered by that very law which you would fain serve?

For the master spirit of the earth shall not sleep peacefully upon the wind till the needs of the least of you are satisfied.

Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean.

Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.

For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.

Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.

Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.

When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born, And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life, And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

Shall the day of parting be the day of gathering? And shall it be said that my eve was in truth my dawn?

And you, vast sea, sleeping mother, Who alone are peace and freedom to the river and the stream, Only another winding will this stream make, only another murmur in this glade, And then I shall come to you, a boundless drop to a boundless ocean.

Fain would I take with me all that is here. But how shall I? A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that gave it wings. Alone must it seek the ether. And alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun.

It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands.

“I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it.”

I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together,