Anna Karenina

I finished reading Anna Karenina.\’c3\’82\’c2\~Of all of the books we’ve read in our book group so far (only 8 or so “classic” novels), it’s the one where I have most often thought “I know exactly what he/she is talking/thinking about and have felt similarly before myself.” Maybe it’s because of the multiple characters at various different ages and stages and positions in life, (more than most of the other novels), and because it spans so much time and so many commonplace events. But here are a couple quotes I either felt clever or particularly stating things I’d felt myself.\par
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As Dolly considers her children with pleasure: “Often, looking at them, she would make every possible effort to persuade herself that she was mistaken, that she as a mother was partial to her children. All the same, she could not help saying to herself that she had charming children, all six of them in different ways, but a set of children such as is not often to be met with, and she was happy in them, and proud of them.”\par
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In pondering the business of marrying off one’s daughters with bewilderment, the princess Shtcherbatsky thought, “And, however much it was instilled into the princess that in our times young people ought to arrange their lives for themselves, she was unable to believe it, just as she would have been unable to believe that, at any time whatever, the most suitable playthings for children five years old ought to be loaded pistols.”\par
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There were more that I folded down the corner of the page for, but I don’t remember which folded down pages mean that there’s an interesting quote, and which folded down points mean important points in the story, so I think I’ll just stop there.\par
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Next up: The Return of the Native\par
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