Shana

“If we’re laying out a garden, planning one before the house, you know, and there you’ve a tree that’s stood for centuries in the very spot. . . . Old and gnarled it may be, and yet you don’t cut down the old fellow to make room for the flowerbeds, but lay out your beds so as to take advantage of the tree. You won’t grow him again in a year . . .”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“All such questions as, for instance,of the cause of failure of crops, of the adherence of certain tribes to their ancient belief, etc.--questions which, but for the convenient intervention of the official machine are not, and cannot be solved for ages--received full, unhesitating solution.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“It hurt her to stir up these feelings, but yet she knew that that was the best part of her soul, and that that part of her soul would quickly be smothered in the life she was leading.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Ivan Iylich saw that he was dying, and was in continual despair.
At the bottom of his heart Ivan Ilyich knew that he was dying; but so far from growing used to the idea, he simply did not grasp it - he was utterly unable to grasp it.
The example of the syllogism that he had learned in Kiseveter's logic - Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal - had seemed to him all his life correct only as regards Caius, but not at all regards himself. In that case it was a question of Caius, a man, an abstract man, and it was perfectly true, but he was not Caius, and was not an abstract man; he had always been a creature quite, quite different from all the others.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych