Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Part Eight

Chapter 19

:Levin talking to himself (thinking)

“This new feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy and enlightened all of a sudden, as I dreamed it would. It is like the way it was with my feeling for my son. There was no surprise about this either. But be it faith or not – I don’t know what it is – through suffering this feeling has crept just as imperceptibly into my heart and has lodged itself firmly there.

I shall still lose my temper with Ivan the coachman, I shall still embark on useless discussions and express my opinions inopportunely; there will still be the same wall between the sanctuary of my inmost soul and other people, even my wife; I shall probably go on scolding her in my anxiety and repenting of it afterwards; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying – but my life now, my whole life, independently of anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no longer meaningless as it was before, but has positive meaning of goodness with which I have the power to invest it.”