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‘These collisions were often caused by each not realising what was important to the other, and also by the fact that in those early days they were often in low spirits. (…) Only in the third month of their married life, after returning from Moscow were they had spent a month, did their life begin to run more smoothly.’ P569

“Levin felt more and more that his ideas of marriage and his dreams of how he would arrange his life had been but childishness, and that this was something he had never understood and was now still further from understanding, although it was happening to him; and in his breast a tremor rose higher and higher, and the unruly tears came to his eyes.”
P535

(…) Vronsky got up at once, and stooping before him looked up into his face without unbending his back. He could not understand Karenin, but felt that here was something high, and inaccessible to one with his outlook on life.
P 490

‘I would give much for the possibility of doubting. While I was in doubt it was hard, but not so hard as it is now. While I doubted, I had hope; but now there is no hope left and all the same I doubt everything. I doubt everything so much that I hate my son, and sometimes believe he is not my son. I am very unhappy.’ P 465

“I must add that the latter case is seldom met with in practice,’ and with a momentary glance at Karenin the lawyer became suddenly silent, like a man who when selling pistols has described the adventures of the different kinds, and waits for his customer’s decision.

The last alinea on this page nails the feeling of holding onto life, it nails the feeling of surviving through a huge wave of depression.

Have I not tried, tried with all my might, to find a purpose in my life? Have I not tried to love him, tried to love my son when I could no longer love my husband? But the time came when I understood that I could no longer deceive myself, that I am alive, and cannot be blamed because God made me so, that I want to love and to live.

All that had so disturbed Levin during the sleepless night and all his resolutions vanished suddenly. He recalled with disgust his thoughts of marrying a peasant girl.

There alone, inside that coach on the other side of the road, so rapidly receding from him, was the one possible solition of that riddle which had been weighing on him so painfully of late.

P328

What a strong start of a story. Characters from the court are human-like, feelings of love are recognisable and the entrance of Anna Karenina took my breath away.