Page 535 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘Come, now.... In the first place, the dispensary is
needed. We ourselves sent for the district doctor for
Agafea Mihalovna.’
‘Oh, well, but I fancy her wrist will never be straight

again.’
‘That remains to be proved.... Next, the peasant who
can read and write is as a workman of more use and value
to you.’
‘No, you can ask anyone you like,’ Konstantin Levin
answered with decision, ‘the man that can read and write
is much inferior as a workman. And mending the
highroads is an impossibility; and as soon as they put up
bridges they’re stolen.’
‘Still, that’s not the point,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch,
frowning. He disliked contradiction, and still more,
arguments that were continually skipping from one thing
to another, introducing new and disconnected points, so
that there was no knowing to which to reply. ‘Do you
admit that education is a benefit for the people?’
‘Yes, I admit it,’ said Levin without thinking, and he
was conscious immediately that he had said what he did
not think. He felt that if he admitted that, it would be
proved that he had been talking meaningless rubbish. How
it would be proved he could not tell, but he knew that

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