3 Quotes About Karenina

In A Doll House by Karenina, Leo Tolstoy portrays a troubled marriage with strong characters and a strong story. Leo Tolstoy writes about the issues that occur in marriage from different perspectives, from the husband to the wife. The husband is torn between his desire for his wife and his loyalty towards his family, while the wife is torn between her passion for her husband and her love for her son. The relationship between Nikolai and he wife is one of the most interesting parts of this novel.

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Art is bad when ‘you see the intent and get put off.’ (Goethe) In Tolstoy one is unaware of the intent, and sees only the thing itself. from the book, On Retranslating A Russian Classic Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Joel Carmichael
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If they hadn’t both been pretending, but had had what is called a heart-to-heart talk, that is, simply told each other just what they were thinking and feeling, then they would just have looked into each other’s eyes, and Constantine would only have said: ‘You’re dying, dying, dying! ’ — while Nicholas would simply have replied: ‘I know I’m dying, but I’m afraid, afraid, afraid! ’ That’s all they would have said if they’d been talking straight from the heart. But it was impossible to live that way, so Levin tried to do what he’d been trying to do all his life without being able to, what a great many people could do so well, as he observed, and without which life was impossible: he tried to say something different from what he thought, and he always felt it came out false, that his brother caught him out and was irritated by it. Leo Tolstoy