Dr. Zhivago - Boris Pasternak

"Every motion in the world taken separately was calculated and purposeful, but, taken together, they were spontaneously intoxicated with the general stream of life which united them all. .. This freedom came from the feeling that all human lives were interrelated, a certainty that they flowed into each - a happy feeling that all events took place not only on the earth, in which the dead are buried, but also in some other region which some called the Kingdom of God, others history, and still others by some other name." (p. 13)

"When they jumped out onto the track and picked flowers or took a short walk to stretch their legs, they felt as if the whole place owed its existence to the accident, and that without it neither the swampy meadow with hillocks, the broad river, nor the fine house and church on the steep opposite side would have been there. Even the diffident evening sun seemed to be a purely local feature." (p. 15)

"'How wonderful to be alive,' he thought. 'But why does it always hurt?'" (p. 17)

"'And why is it,' thought Lara, 'that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?'" (p. 24)

"Nothing equalled her spiritual beauty. Her hands were stunning like a sublime idea. Her shadow on the wall of the hotel room was like the outline of her innocence. ... 'Lara,' he whispered, shutting his eyes, and he had a vision of her head resting on his hands; her eyes were closed, she was asleep, unconscious that he watched her sleeplessly for hours on end. Her hair was scattered and its beauty stung his eyes like smoke and ate into his heart." (p.46)

"And it is this that makes the whole of life so terrifying. Does it crush you by thunder and lightning? No, by oblique glances and whispered calumny. It is all treachery and ambiguity. Any single thread is as fragile as a cobweb, but just try to pull yourself out of the net, you only become more entangled.
And the strong are dominated by the weak and the ignoble." (p. 48)

"He was so childishly simple that he did not conceal his joy at seeing her, as if she were some summer landscape of birch trees, grass, and clouds, and could freely express his enthusiasm about her without any risk of being laughed at." (p. 50)

"And now listen carefully. You in others - this is your soul. This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived on and enjoyed throughout your life - your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others. And what does it matter to you if later on that is called your memory? This will be you - the you that enters the future and becomes a part of it.
And now one last point. There is nothing to fear. There is no such thing as death. Death has nothing to do with us." (p. 68)

"He rebelled against the motherly feeling that all her life had been a part of her affection for him and could not see that such a love was something more, not less, than the ordinary feeling of a woman for a man" (p. 109)

"How I wish your face to say that you are happy with your fate and that you need nothing from anyone. If only someone who is really close to you, your friend or your husband - best of all if he were a soldier - would take me by the hand and tell me to stop worrying about your fate and not to weary you with my attentions. But I'd wrest my hand free and take a swing... " (p. 147)

"And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness" (p. 175)

"What is truly great is without beginning, like the universe. It confronts us as suddenly as it if had always been there or had dropped out of the blue." (p. 182)

"In some inexplicable way it was clear at once that this man was entirely a manifestation of the will. So completely was he the self he resolved to be that everything about him seemed inevitable, exact, perfect - his well-proportioned, handsomely set head, his impetuous step, his long legs, his knee boots which may well have been muddy but looked polished, and his gray serge tunic which may have been creased but looked as if it were made of the best linen and had just been pressed.
Such was the irresistible effect of his brilliance, his unaffected ease, and his sense of being at home in any conceivable situation on earth." (p. 248)

"Filled with the loftiest aspirations from his childhood, he had looked upon the world as a vast arena where everyone competed for perfection, keeping scrupulously to the rules. When he found that this was not so, it did not occur to him that his conception of the world order might have been oversimplified. He nursed his grievance and with it the ambition to judge between life and the dark forces that distorted it, and to be life's champion and avenger." (p. 251)

The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories - Tolstoy

From "Family Happiness" -

"In the morning we were cheerful, at dinner polite, in the evening tender. 'Good!...' I said to myself, 'that's all very well, to do good and lead an upright life, as he says, but we've plenty of time for that, and there is something else for which I only have the energy now.' That was not what I needed, I needed strife; I wanted feeling to guide us in life, and not life to be the guide to feeling. I longed to go with him to the edge of a precipice and to say 'Another step, and I fling myself down! another movement and I am lost!' and for him, pale at the edge of the abyss, to snatch me up in his strong arms, hold me over it, so that my heart would stand still, and bear me away whither he would." (p.51)

"'What are you whispering today?' I asked.
He stopped, thought a little, and with a smile quoted the two lines of Lermontov -

'And in his madness prays for storms,
As though in storms he might find peace'"
(p. 55)

From "The Kreutzer Sonata"

"'No, I am speaking about the same thing, about the preference that one man or one woman has for one person above all others, and I simply ask, 'How long is this preference to last?''
'How long? why, sometimes it lasts a whole lifetime,' said the lady, shrugging her shoulders.
'Yes, but that is true only in novels, but never in real life. In real life this preference for one person rather than another may occasionally last for a year, more frequently it is measured by months, or even by weeks or days or hours,' said he, evidently knowing that he was surprising every one by his opinion, and well satisfied with it. ...
'Yes, I know,' ... 'You are speaking of what is supposed to exist, but I am speaking of what does exist. For every man feels for every pretty woman what you call love.'"
(p. 154)

"'Depravity does not lie in anything physical; depravity does not imply any physical deformity; depravity, genuine depravity, consist in freeing oneself from the moral relations to women with whom you enter into physical relations. And this emancipation I arrogated to myself as a virtue.'" (p. 158)

"'It is a marvelous thing how full of illusion is the notion that beauty is an advantage. A beautiful woman says all sorts of foolishness, you listen and you do not hear any foolishness, but what you hear seems to you wisdom itself. She says and does vulgar things, and to you it seems lovely. Even when she does not say stupid or vulgar things, but it simply beautiful, you are convinced that she is miraculously wise and moral.'"
(p. 163)

..tbc...

Anna Karenina - Tolstoy

"He could not have been mistaken. There were no other eyes in the world like those. There was no other being in the world capable of concentrating for him all the light and meaning of life. It was she. It was Kitty. He realized that she was driving to Yergushovo from the railway station. And all that had troubled Levin during that sleepless night, all the decisions he had taken, all of it suddenly vanished. He recalled with disgust his dreams of marrying a peasant woman. There, in that carriage quickly moving away and bearing to the other side of the road, was the only possibility of resolving the riddle of his life that had been weighing on him so painfully of late."
(p. 277)

"She loved him for himself and for his love of her. To possess him fully was a constant joy for her. His nearness was always pleasing to her. All the traits of his character, which she was coming to know more and more, were inexpressibly dear to her. ... Her admiration for him often frightened her: she sought and failed to find anything not beautiful in him. She did not dare show him her awareness of her own nullity before him. It seemed to her that if he knew it, he would stop loving her sooner; and she feared nothing so much now, though she had no reason for it, as losing his love." (p. 464)

"What he felt for this small being was not at all what he expected. There was nothing happy or joyful in this feeling; on the contrary, there was a new tormenting fear. There was an awareness of a new region of vulnerability. And this awareness was so tormenting at first, the fear lest this helpless being should suffer was so strong, that because of it he scarcely noticed the strange feeling of senseless joy and even pride he had experienced when the baby sneezed." (p. 719)

"But he needed only to go and stay for a while in Petersburg, in the circle to which he belonged, where people lived - precisely lived, and did not vegetate as in Moscow - and immediately all these thoughts vanished and melted away like wax before the face of fire. ...
Children? In Petersburg children did not hinder their father's life. Children were brought up in institutions, and there existed nothing like that wild idea spreading about Moscow ... that children should get all the luxuries of life and parents nothing but toil and care. Here they understood that a man is obliged to live for himself, as an educated person ought to live." (p. 729)

"Moreover, he felt vaguely that what he called his convictions were not only ignorance but were a way of thinking that made the knowledge he needed impossible.
...
The question for him consisted in the following: 'If I do not accept the answers that Christianity gives to the questions of my life, then which answers do I accept?' And nowhere in the whole arsenal of his convictions was he able to find, not only any answers, but anything resembling an answer.
He was in the position of a man looking for food in a toymaker's or a gunsmith's shop.
Involuntarily, unconsciously, he now sought in every book, in every conversation, in every person, a connection with these questions and their resolution.
What amazed and upset him most of all was that the majority of people his age and circle, who had replaced their former beliefs, as he had, with the same new beliefs as he had, did not see anything wrong with it and were perfectly calm and content. So that, besides the main question, Levin was tormented by other questions: Are these people sincere? Are they not pretending? Or do they not understand somehow differently, more clearly, than he the answers science gives to the questions that concerned him?" (p. 786)

"He felt something new in his soul and delightedly probed this new thing, not yet knowing what it was.
'To live not for one's own needs but for God. For what God? For God. And could anything more meaningless be said than what he said? He said one should not live for one's needs - that is, one should not live for what we understand, for what we're drawn to, for what we want - but for something incomprehensible, for God, whom no one can either comprehend or define.'" (p. 795)