Page 93 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘But perhaps you are right. Very likely...I don’t know, I
don’t know.’
‘It’s this, don’t you see,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
‘you’re very much all of a piece. That’s your strong point

and your failing. You have a character that’s all of a piece,
and you want the whole of life to be of a piece too—but
that’s not how it is. You despise public official work
because you want the reality to be invariably
corresponding all the while with the aim—and that’s not
how it is. You want a man’s work, too, always to have a
defined aim, and love and family life always to be
undivided—and that’s not how it is. All the variety, all the
charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and
shadow.’
Levin sighed and made no reply. He was thinking of
his own affairs, and did not hear Oblonsky.
And suddenly both of them felt that though they were
friends, though they had been dining and drinking
together, which should have drawn them closer, yet each
was thinking only of his own affairs, and they had nothing
to do with one another. Oblonsky had more than once
experienced this extreme sense of aloofness, instead of
intimacy, coming on after dinner, and he knew what to
do in such cases.

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