Relief

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  An impulse which discharges itself immediately is generally quite neutral as regards pleasure or pain —the breathing impulse, for example. If such an impulse is arrested, however, by an extrinsic force, a great feeling of uneasiness is produced —for instance, the dyspnœa of asthma. And in proportion as the arresting force is then overcome, relief acrues —as when we draw breath again after the asthma subsides. The relief is a pleasure and the uneasiness a pain; and thus it happens that round all our impulses, merely as such, there twine, as it were, secondary possibilities of pleasant and painful feeling, involved in the manner in which the act is allowed to occur. These pleasures and pains of achievement, discharge, or fruition exist, no matter what the original spring of action be. We are glad when we have successfully got ourselves out of a danger, though the thought of the gladness was surely not what suggested to us to escape. To have compassed the steps towards a proposed sensual indulgence also makes us glad, and this gladness is a pleasure additional to the pleasure originally proposed. On the other hand, we are chagrined and displeased when any activity, however investigated, is hindered whilst in process of actual discharge. We are 'uneasy' till the discharge starts up again. And this is just as true when the action is neutral, or has nothing but pain in view as its result, as when it was undertaken for pleasure's express sake. The moth is probably as annoyed if hindered from getting into the lamp-flame as the roué is if interrupted in his debauch; and we are chagrined if prevented from doing some quite unimportant act which would have given us no noticeable pleasure if done, merely because the prevention itself is disagreeable.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  images enter the mind, so rapid is the whole process.[231] We all of us have this permanent consciousness of whither our thought is going. It is a feeling like any other, a feeling of what thoughts are next to arise, before they have arisen. This field of view of consciousness varies very much in extent, depending largely on the degree of mental freshness or fatigue. When very fresh, our minds carry an immense horizon with them. The present image shoots its perspective far before it, irradiating in advance the regions in which lie the thoughts as yet unborn. Under ordinary conditions the halo of felt relations is much more circumscribed. And in states of extreme brain-fag the horizon is narrowed almost to the passing word,—the associative machinery, however, providing for the next word turning up in orderly sequence, until at last the tired thinker is led to some kind of a conclusion. At certain moments he may find himself doubting whether his thoughts have not come to a full stop; but the vague sense of a plus ultra makes him ever struggle on towards a more definite expression of what it may be; whilst the slowness of his utterance shows how difficult, under such conditions, the labor of thinking must be. The awareness that our definite thought has come to a stop is an entirely different thing from the awareness that our thought is definitively completed. The expression of the latter state of mind is the falling inflection which betokens that the sentence is ended, and silence. The expression of the former state is 'hemming and hawing,' or else such phrases as 'et cetera ,' or 'and so forth.' But notice that every part of the sentence to be left incomplete feels differently as it passes, by reason of the premonition we have that we shall be unable to end it. The 'and so forth' casts its shadow back, and is as integral a part of the object of the thought as the distinctest of images would be. Again, when we use a common noun, such as man , in a universal sense, as signifying all possible men, we are fully aware of this intention on our part, and distinguish it carefully from our intention when we mean a certain group of men, or a solitary individual before us. In the chapter on Conception we shall see how important this difference of intention is. It casts its influence over the whole of the sentence, both before and after the spot in which the word man is used. Nothing is easier than to symbolize all these facts in terms of brain-action. Just as the echo of the whence , the sense of the starting point of our thought, is probably due to the dying excitement of processes but a moment since vividly aroused; so the sense of the whither, the fore-taste of the terminus, must be due to the waxing excitement of tracts or processes which, a moment hence, will be

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  determined thereby. Mr. Galton, in his work on English Men of Science,[606] has given a very interesting collation of cases showing individual variations in the type of memory, where it is strong. Some have it verbal. Others have it good for facts and figures, others for form. Most say that what is to be remembered must first be rationally conceived and assimilated.[607] There is an interesting fact connected with remembering, which, so far as I know, Mr. R. Verdon was the first writer expressly to call attention to. We can set our memory as it were to retain things for a certain time, and then let them depart. "Individuals often remember clearly and well up to the time when they have to use their knowledge, and then, when it is no longer required, there follows a rapid and extensive decay of the traces. Many schoolboys forgot their lessons after they have said them, many barristers forgot details got up for a particular case. Thus a boy learns thirty lines of Homer, says them perfectly, and then forgets them so that he could not say five consecutive lines the next morning, and a barrister may be one week learned in the mysteries of making cog-wheels, but in the next he may be well acquainted with the anatomy of the ribs instead."[608] The rationale of this fact is obscure; and the existence of it ought to make us feel how truly subtle are the nervous processes which memory involves. Mr. Verdon adds that "When the use of a record is withdrawn, and attention withdrawn from it, and we think no more about it, we know that we experience a feeling of relief, and we may thus conclude that energy is in some way liberated. If the . . . attention is not withdrawn, so that we keep the record in mind, we know that this feeling of relief does not take place. . . . Also we are well aware, not only that after this feeling of relief takes place, the record does not seem so well conserved as before, but that we have real difficulty in attempting to remember it." This shows that we are not as entirely unconscious of a topic as we think, during the time in which we seem to be merely retaining it subject to recall. "Practically," says Mr. Verdon, "we sometimes keep a matter in hand not exactly by attending to it, but by keeping our attention referred to something connected with it from time to time. Translating this into the language of physiology, we mean that by referring attention to a part within, or closely connected with, the system of traces [paths] required to be remembered, we keep it well fed, so that the traces are preserved with the utmost delicacy." This is perhaps as near as we can get to an explanation. Setting the mind to remember a thing involves a continual minimal irradiation of excitement into paths which lead thereto, involves the continued

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  and they have carried with them the quantity of duration which was inherent in their being. This deficit of surviving conscious states is thus a deficit in the amount of represented time. The process of abridgment, of foreshortening, of which we have spoken, presupposes this deficit. If, in order to reach a distant reminiscence, we had to go through the entire series of terms which separate it from our present selves, memory would become impossible on account of the length of the operation. We thus reach the paradoxical result that one condition of remembering is that we should forget. Without totally forgetting a prodigious number of states of consciousness, and momentarily forgetting a large number, we could not remember at all. Oblivion, except in certain cases, is thus no malady of memory, but a condition of its health and its life."[598] There are many irregularities in the process of forgetting which are as yet unaccounted for. A thing forgotten on one day will be remembered on the next. Something we have made the most strenuous efforts to recall, but all in vain, will, soon after we have given up the attempt, saunter into the mind, as Emerson somewhere says, as innocently as if it had never been sent for. Experiences of bygone date will revive after years of absolute oblivion, often as the result of some cerebral disease or accident which seems to develop latent paths of association, as the photographer's fluid develops the picture sleeping in the collodion film. The oftenest quoted of these cases is Coleridge's: "In a Roman Catholic town in Germany, a young woman, who could neither read nor write, was seized with a fever, and was said by the priests to be possessed of a devil, because she was heard talking Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Whole sheets of her ravings were written out, and found to consist of sentences intelligible in themselves, but having slight connection with each other. Of her Hebrew sayings, only a few could be traced to the Bible, and most seemed to be in the Rabbinical dialect. All trick was out of the question; the woman was a simple creature; there was no doubt as to the fever. It was long before any explanation, save that of demoniacal possession, could be obtained. At last the mystery was unveiled by a physician, who determined to trace back the girl's history, and who, after much trouble, discovered that at the age of nine she had been charitably taken by an old Protestant pastor, a great Hebrew scholar, in whose house she lived till his death. On further inquiry it appeared to have been the old man's custom for years to walk up and down a passage of his house into which the kitchen opened, and to read to himself with a loud voice out of his books. The books were ransacked, and among them were found several of the Greek and Latin Fathers, together with a collection of Rabbinical writings. In these works

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  'carry that line,' as the merchants say, of self at all. With no attempt there can be no failure; with no failure no humiliation. So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do. It is determined by the ratio of our actualities to our supposed potentialities; a fraction of which our pretensions are the denominator and the numerator our success: thus, Self-esteem = Success/Pretensions. Such a fraction may be increased as well by diminishing the denominator as by increasing the numerator.[263] To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them gratified; and where disappointment is incessant and the struggle unending, this is what men will always do. The history of evangelical theology, with its conviction of sin, its self-despair, and its abandonment of salvation by works, is the deepest of possible examples, but we meet others in every walk of life. There is the strangest lightness about the heart when one's nothingness in a particular line is once accepted in good faith. All is not bitterness in the lot of the lover sent away by the final inexorable 'No.' Many Bostonians, crede experto (and inhabitants of other cities, too, I fear), would be happier women and men to-day, if they could once for all abandon the notion of keeping up a Musical Self, and without shame let people hear them call a symphony a nuisance. How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young,—or slender! Thank God! we say, those illusions are gone. Everything added to the Self is a burden as well as a pride. A certain man who lost every penny during our civil war went and actually rolled in the dust, saying he had not felt so free and happy since he was born. Once more, then, our self-feeling is in our power. As Carlyle says: "Make thy claim of wages a zero, then hast thou the world under thy feet. Well did the wisest of our time write, it is only with renunciation that life, properly speaking, can be said to begin." Neither threats nor pleadings can move a man unless they touch some one of his potential or actual selves. Only thus can we, as a rule, get a 'purchase' on another's will. The first care of diplomatists and monarchs and all who wish to rule or influence is, accordingly, to find out their victim's strongest principle of self-regard, so as to make that the fulcrum of all appeals. But if a man has given up those things which are subject to foreign fate, and ceased to regard them as parts of himself at all, we are well-nigh powerless over him. The Stoic receipt for contentment was to dispossess yourself in advance of all that was out of your own power,—then fortune's shocks might rain down unfelt. Epictetus exhorts us, by thus narrowing and at the same time solidifying our Self to make it invulnerable: "I must die; well,

• From Story of O (1954)

  used to long dresses and did not feel steady on the mules with thick soles and very high heels which only a thick satin strip, of the same green as her dress, kept from slipping off her feet. As she bent down she turned her head. The women were waiting, the men were no longer looking at her. Her lover, seated on the floor leaning against the ottoman over which she had been thrown at the beginning of the evening, with his knees raised and his elbows on his knees, was toying with the leather whip. As she took her first step to join the women, her skirt grazed him. He raised his head and smiled, calling her by her name, and he too stood up. Softly her caressed her hair, smoothed her eyebrows with the tip of his finger, and softly kissed her on the lips. In a loud voice, he told her that he loved her. O, trembling, was terrified to notice that she answered "I love you," and that it was true. He pulled her against him and said: "Darling, sweetheart," kissed her on the neck and the curve of the cheek; she had let her head fall on his shoulder, which was covered by the purple robe. Very softly this time he repeated to her that he loved her, and very softly added: "You're going to kneel down, cress me, and kiss me," and he pushed her away, signaling to the women to move aside so he could lean back against the console. He was tall, but the table was not very high and his long legs, sheathed in the same purple as his robe, were bent. The open rope stiffened from beneath like drapes, and the top of the console table slightly raised his heavy sex and the light fleece above it. The three men approached. O knelt down on the rug, her green dress in a corolla around her. Her bodice squeezed her; her breasts whose nipples were visible, were at the level of her lover's knees. "A little more light," said one of the men. As they were adjusting the lamp so that the beam of light would fall directly on his sex and on his mistress's face, which was almost touching it, and on her hands which were caressing him from below, René suddenly ordered: "Say it again: 'I love you." O repeated "I love you," with such delight that her lips hardly dared brush the tip of his sex, which was still protected by its sheath of soft flesh. The three men, who were smoking, commented on her gestures, on the movement of her mouth closed and locked on the sex she had seized, as it worked its way up and down, on the way tears streamed down her ravaged face each time the swollen member struck the back of her throat and made her gag, depressing her tongue and causing her to feel nauseous. It was this same mouth which, half gagging on the hardened flesh which filled it, murmured again: "I love you." The two women had taken up positions to the right and left of René who had one arm around each of their shoulders. O could hear the comments made by those present, , but through their words she strained to hear her lover's moans, caressing him carefully, slowly , and with infinite respect, the way she knew pleased him. O felt that her mouth was beautiful, since her lover condescended to thrust himself into it, since he deigned publicly to offer caresses to it, since, finally, he deigned to discharge in it. She received as a god is received, she heard him cry

• From Story of O (1954)

  "But I know where you were, silly. Coming back from Anne-Marie's. And in ten days you're going to Samois. Sir Stephen just talked to me on the phone." René was seated in the only comfortable chain in the office, which was facing the table, and O had buried herself in his arms. "They can do whatever they want with me, I don't care," she murmured. "But tell me you still love me." "Of course I love you, darling," René said, "but I want you to obey me, and I'm afraid you're not doing a very good job of it. Did you tell Jacqueline that you belonged to Sir Stephen, did you talk to her about Roissy?" O assured him that she had not. Jacqueline acquiesced to her caresses, but the day she should learn that O... René stopped her from completing her sentence, lifted her up and laid her down in the chair where he had just been sitting, and bunched up her skirt. "Ah ha, so you have your corset," he said. "It's true that you'll be much more attractive when you have a smaller waistline." Then he took her, and it seemed to O that it had been so long since he had that, subconsciously, she realized she had begun to doubt whether he really desired her any longer, and in his act she saw proof of love. "You know," he said afterward, "you're foolish not to talk to Jacqueline. We absolutely need her at Roissy, and the simplest way of getting her there would be through you. Besides, when you come back from Anne-Marie's there won't be any way of concealing your true conditioning any longer." O wanted to know why. "You'll see," René went on. "You still have five days, and only five days, because Sir Stephen intends to start whipping you again daily, five days before he sends you to Anne-Marie's and there will be no way for you to hide the marks. How will you ever explain them to Jacqueline?" O did not reply. What René did not know was that Jacqueline was completely egotistical as far as O was concerned, being interested in her solely because of O's manifest, and passionate, interest in her, and she never looked at O. If O were covered with welts from the floggings, all she would have to do would be to take care not to bathe in Jacqueline's presence, and to wear a nightgown. Jacqueline would never notice a thing. She had never noticed that O did not wear panties, and there was no danger she would notice anything else: the fact was that O did not interest her. "Listen to me," René went on, "there's one thing anyway I want you to tell her, and tell her right away, and that is that I'm in love with her." "Ts that true?" O said.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  DeNooyer said the frameworks are an anchor that employees can refer back to, helping them prioritize and avoid frustration. “People have them hanging on their bulletin board or as a screensaver,” she added. “And when the world seems to be on fire, they can lean back and say, ‘Okay, does this new thing fit?’ If not, they probably don’t need to be working on it.” As a new step in creating roadmaps, involving the entire group in the process of developing team targets is powerful for a few key reasons. First, team members are better than bosses at knowing how much time particular tasks will take, and what impediments they may hit to getting them done; and when a manager really listens to this input it helps reduce unnecessary stress going forward. Second, by working transparently as a group, everyone can understand and align on the most critical priorities for the team as a whole. Third, research has shown that giving teams a greater sense of control over their collective goals is a boon for engagement and productivity. We’ve known this for some time. For instance, in 1939, Kurt Lewin conducted what we believe is the first study to identify if group expectations would strengthen achievement at the Harwood Pajama Factory in Virginia. Several teams of workers at the factory were given a chance to set their own goals, and the participants met for thirty minutes each week to talk about challenges they were facing and collectively discuss whether they were ready to increase productivity or keep it the same. During the weekly meetings, it became clear that workers were using different methods to accomplish the same tasks on the line, which led to improvements and standardizations in processes that enhanced productivity. At the end of each meeting, the group voted on whether to increase their daily output, to what level, and over what period of time. As a result, they eventually voted to enhance output from seventy-five units an hour to eighty-seven over a period of five days. A few weeks later, they agreed they could increase output again. Throughout the next five months, the group maintained its growth and achieved output well beyond anything seen before. Lewin believed that this democratic way of decision-making was the key to productivity growth. In fact, groups tested later—that had no democratic voting, and where a manager set the goals—did not achieve anywhere near the same productivity growth.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  One last hard truth about this process is that sometimes coming to a clear understanding with an employee about the path they need to be on may lead to them leaving your team. And that might be optimal for the company and employee. That was the view of the CEO of a large insurance company we worked with. We conducted motivation training for about a thousand leaders. Many were able to better align their daily tasks with their key drivers. As we sat down with the CEO to discuss the results, he told us three of his valued managers had decided to move on because of the training—one to become a teacher, another to open a small business, and the third to go back to university. We were a little nervous how he’d react, but he was just fine. “If they aren’t happy, their employees are going to smell it on them,” he said. “And to lose only three out of a thousand is pretty good. We have to be doing something right.” Like this CEO, good leaders aren’t afraid to have their tribe members really consider what drives them at work—even if they may leave one day. A bonus is that this process can alleviate employee anxiety about advancement as well. And managers who help their employees learn what they’ll be motivated by at work become known as great bosses to work for. Bestselling author and former Oracle executive Liz Wiseman calls these leaders “talent magnets.” She told us, “Smart, capable people find these bosses because of the reputation they build. They get known as the managers everyone wants to work for because of their ability to tap into people’s native genius.” As Wiseman describes it, native genius is that thing you can do that makes you unique, a specific way your brain is wired that helps you add value—even if it may have been perceived as a negative in the past. She gave us a real-world example: Brian admitted he’d been called “Dr. No” in other places he’d worked. He couldn’t help himself: He could immediately see flaws in any plan suggested by others. Instead of coaching Brian out of that habit, a talent magnet leader would work with it. She’d say, “Brian, this is great.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Another key member of the meeting is the Promise Tracker, someone who makes a list of who agrees to what and the timelines. We found a good example of team load-balancing when we worked with a biotech firm. A leader of a quality team had called such a meeting during a crisis in the factory: A contaminant had been found in one of their sterile products. During the meeting, a senior staff member mentioned they could postpone their deviation reports for up to thirty days and still meet FDA requirements. The reports document exceptions found to normal operating procedures, and the team normally prided themselves on completing them within days. Decision made, the team was then able to prioritize the next few weeks’ efforts on finding the point of contamination. The quality team got through the crisis and found it helpful to continue to meet weekly thereafter to balance loads, which resulted in the streamlining of several of their key processes. They discovered some work they’d been doing for years could be safely omitted entirely—for instance, one batch report was no longer required at all by regulators, and an internal audit that had been conducted monthly could be done quarterly. Left to work individually, the team members would most likely never have come up with these solutions. Tensions would have mounted, and goals might have been missed. Instead, conditions improved for everyone. Method 3: Rotate PeopleIf it’s possible given the nature of their business, leaders should consider moving people out of high-load and high-stress jobs into lower-stress ones in a rotating schedule to avoid anxiety overload. “Changes of pace, changes of demands, and shifts into situations that may not be so draining enable people to replenish their energies and get new and more accurate perspectives on themselves and their roles,” counseled Harvard’s Harry Levinson. Change also helps people be able to look forward to a time when they can get out of tough assignments. A study among nurses in the United States found job rotation helped reduce burnout. It also inspired staff members to achieve higher performance and allowed them to gain new knowledge and skills. Best of all for their hospitals, it increased the quality of care given to patients. A practitioner of job rotating is Matthew Ross, co-owner of The Slumber Yard, an online mattress review firm. His goal with moving people between jobs has been to enhance employee satisfaction, reduce turnover, and have his team members gain valuable new skills. Employees transfer to other lateral jobs as often as quarterly, and he finds that training employees to be competent in multiple disciplines helps reduce stress when one of them has to fill in for a colleague who’s out for a day or if an employee moves on. When done thoughtfully and with proper training, rotating jobs can also be an opportunity to help people move out of their comfort zones and work in areas where they may not normally be assigned.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Furthermore, recently obtained DNA analyses suggest several population bottlenecks caused by environmental catastrophes reduced our species to just a few hundred individuals as recently as 70,000 years ago. 14 Ours is a very young species. Few of our ancestors faced the unrelenting scarcity-generated selective pressures envisioned by Hobbes, Malthus, and Darwin. The ancestral human journey did not, by and large, take place in a world already saturated with our kind, fighting over scraps. Rather, the route taken by the bulk of our ancestors led through a long series of ecosystems with nothing quite like us already there. Like the Burmese pythons recently set loose in the Everglades, cane toads spreading unchecked across Australia, or the timber wolves recently reintroduced to Yellowstone, our ancestors were generally entering an open ecological niche. When Hobbes wrote that “Man to Man is an arrant Wolfe,” he was unaware of just how cooperative and communicative wolves can be if there’s enough food for everyone. Individuals in species spreading into rich new ecosystems aren’t locked in a struggle to the death against one another. Until the niche is saturated, such intraspecies conflict over food is counterproductive and needless. 15 We’ve already shown that even in a largely empty world, the social lives of foragers were anything but solitary. But Hobbes also claimed prehistoric life was poor, and Malthus believed poverty to be eternal and inescapable. Yet most foragers don’t believe themselves to be impoverished, and there’s every indication that life wasn’t generally much of a struggle for our fire-controlling, highly intelligent ancestors bound together in cooperative bands. To be sure, occasional catastrophes such as droughts, climatic shifts, and volcanic eruptions were devastating. But most of our ancestors lived in a largely unpopulated world, chock-full of food. For hundreds of thousands of generations, the omnivore’s dilemma facing our ancestors lay in choosing among many culinary options. Plants eat soil; deer eat plants; cougars eat deer. But people can and do eat almost anything—including cougars, deer, plants, and yes, even soil. 16 The Despair of Millionaires Poverty … is the invention of civilization. M ARSHALL S AHLINS A recent New York Times article under the headline “In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich” begins, “By almost any definition—except his own and perhaps those of his neighbors here in Silicon Valley—Hal Steger has it made.” The article notes that although Mr.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Yes, it's all over, but it was all much less serious than we had supposed,' answered Anna. 'My belle-soeur is in general too hasty.' But Countess Lidia Ivanovna, though she was interested in everything that did not concern her, had a habit of never listening to what interested her; she interrupted Anna— 'Yes, there's plenty of sorrow and evil in the world. I am so worried today?' 'Oh, why?' asked Anna, trying to suppress a smile. 'I'm beginning to be weary of fruitlessly championing the truth, and sometimes I'm quite unhinged by it. The Society of the Little Sisters' (this was a religiously-patriotic, philanthropic institution) 'was going splendidly, but with these gentlemen it's impossible to do anything,' added Countess Lidia Ivanovna in a tone of ironical submission to destiny. 'They pounce on the idea, and distort it, and then work it out so pettily and unworthily. Two or three people, your husband among them, understand all the importance of the thing, but the others simply drag it down. Yesterday Pravdin wrote to me . . . ' Pravdin was a well-known Panslavist abroad, and Countess Lidia Ivanovna described the purport of his letter. Then the countess told her of more disagreements and intrigues against the work of the unification of the churches, and departed in haste, as she had that day to be at the meeting of some society and also at the Slavonic committee. 'It was all the same before, of course; but why was it I didn't notice it before?' Anna asked herself. 'Or has she been very much irritated today? It's really ludicrous; her object is doing good; she's a Chris tian, yet she's always angry; and she always has enemies, and always enemies in the name of Christianity and doing good.' After Countess Lidia Ivanovna another friend came, the wife of a chief secretary, who told her all the news of the town. At three o'clock she too went away, promising to come to dinner. Alexey Alexandrovitch was at the ministry. Anna, left alone, spent the time till dinner in assisting at her son's dinner (he dined apart from his parents) and in putting her things in order, and in reading and answering the notes and letters which had accumulated on her table. The feeling of causeless shame, which she had felt on the journey, and her excitement, too, had completely vanished. In the habitual conditions of her life she felt again resolute and irreproachable. She recalled with wonder her state of mind on the previous day. 'What was it? Nothing. Vronsky said something silly, which it was easy to put a stop to, and I answered as I ought to have done. To speak of it to my husband would be unnecessary and out of the question. To speak of it would be to attach importance to what has no importance.'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Wait a little.' He was silent. 'Right!' he pronounced all at once reassuringly, as though all were solved for him. 'O Lord !' he murmured, and sighed deeply. Marya Nikolaevna felt his feet. 'They're getting cold,' she whispered. For a long while, a very long while it seemed to Levin, the sick man lay motionless. But he was still alive, and from time to time he sighed. Levin by now was exhausted from mental strain. He felt that, with no mental effort, could he understand what it was that was right. He could not even think of the problem of death itself, but with no will of his own thoughts kept coming to him of what he had to do next; closing the dead man's eyes, dressing him, ordering the coffin. And, strange to say, he felt utterly cold, and was not conscious of sorrow nor of loss, less still of pity for his brother. If he had any feeling for his brother at that moment, it was envy for the knowledge the dying man had now that he could not have. A long time more he sat over him so, continually expecting the end. But the end did not come. The door opened and Kitty appeared. Levin got up to stop her. But at the moment he was getting up, he caught the sound of the dying man stirring. 'Don't go away,' said Nikolay, and held out his hand. Levin gave him his, and angrily waved to his wife to go away. With the dying man's hand in his hand, he sat for half an hour, an hour, another hour. He did not think of death at all now. He wondered what Kitty was doing; who lived in the next room; whether the doctor lived in a house of his own. He longed for food and for sleep. He cautiously drew away his hand and felt the feet. The feet were cold, but the sick man was still breathing. Levin tried again to move away on tiptoe, but the sick man stirred again and said: 'Don't go.' The dawn came; the sick man's condition was unchanged. Levin stealthily withdrew his hand, and without looking at the dying man, went off to his own room and went to sleep. When he woke up, instead of news of his brother's death which he expected, he learned that the sick man had returned to his earlier condition. He had begun sitting up again, coughing, had begun eating again, talking again, and again had ceased to talk of death, again had begun to express hope of his recovery, and had become more irritable and gloomier than ever. No one, neither his brother nor Kitty, could soothe him.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  On his way back, tired and hungry, from shooting, Levin had so distinct a vision of meat-pies, that as he approached the hut he seemed to smell and taste them, as Laska had smelt the game, and he immediately told Philip to give him some. It appeared that there were no pies left, or even any chicken. 'Well, this fellow's appetite!' said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing and pointing at Vassenka Veslovsky. 'I never suffer from loss of appetite, but he's really marvellous! . . .' 'Well, it can't be helped,' said Levin, looking gloomily at Veslovsky. 'Well, Philip, give me some beef, then.' 'The beef's been eaten, and the bones given to the dogs,' answered Philip. Levin was so hurt that he said, in a tone of vexation, 'You might have left me something!' and he felt ready to cry. 'Then put away the game,' he said in a shaking voice to Philip, trying not to look at Vassenka, 'and cover them with some nettles. And you might at least ask for some milk for me.' But when he had drunk some milk, he felt ashamed immediately at having shown his annoyance to a stranger, and he began to laugh at his hungry mortification. In the evening they went shooting again, and Veslovsky had several successful shots, and in the night they drove home. Their homeward journey was as lively as their drive out had been. Veslovsky sang songs and related with enjoyment his adventures with the peasants, who had regaled him with vodka, and said to him; 'Excuse our homely ways,' and his night's adventures with kiss-in-the-ring and the servant-girl and the peasant, who had asked him was he married, and on learning that he was not, said to him, 'Well, mind you don't run after other men's wives—you'd better get one of your own.' These words had particularly amused Veslovsky. 'Altogther, I've enjoyed our outing awfully. And you, Levin?' 'I have, very much,' Levin said quite sincerely. It was particularly delightful to him to have got rid of the hostility he had been feeling towards Vassenka Veslovsky at home, and to feel instead the most friendly disposition to him. XIV N EXT day at ten o'clock Levin, who had already gone his rounds, knocked at the room where Vassenka had been put for the night. 'Entrez!' Veslovsky called to him. 'Excuse me, I've only just finished my ablutions,' he said, smiling, standing before him in his underclothes only. 'Don't mind me, please.' Levin sat down in the window. 'Have you slept well?' 'Like the dead. What sort of day is it for shooting?' 'What will you take, tea or coffee?' 'Neither. I'll wait till lunch. I'm really ashamed. I suppose the ladies are down? A walk now would be capital. You show me your horses.' After walking about the garden, visiting the stable, and even doing some gymnastic exercises together on the parallel bars, Levin returned to the house with his guest, and went with him into the drawing-room.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  One advantage in this town life was that quarrels hardly ever happened between them here in town. Whether it was that their conditions were different, or that they had both become more careful and sensible in that respect, they had no quarrels in Moscow from jealousy, which they had so dreaded when they moved from the country. One event, an event of great importance to both from that point of view, did indeed happen—that was Kitty's meeting with Vronsky. The old Princess Marya Borissovna, Kitty's godmother, who had always been very fond of her, had insisted on seeing her. Kitty, though she did not go into society at all on account of her condition, went with her father to see the. venerable old lady, and there met Vronsky. The only thing Kitty could reproach herself for at this meeting was that at the instant when she recognised in his civilian dress the features once so familiar to her, her breath failed her, the blood rushed to her heart, and a vivid blush—she felt it—overspread her face. But this lasted only a few seconds. Before her father, who purposely began talking in a loud voice to Vronsky, had finished, she was perfectly ready to look at Vronsky, to speak to him, if necessary, exactly as she spoke to Princess Marya Borissovna, and more than that, to do so in such a way that everything to the faintest intonation and smile would have been approved by her husband, whose unseen presence she seemed to feel about her at that instant. She said a few words to him, even smiled serenely at his joke about the elections, which he called 'our parliament.' (She had to smile to show she saw the joke.) But she turned away immediately to Princess Marya Borrissovna, and did not once glance at him till he got up to go; then she looked at him, but evidently only because it would be uncivil not to look at a man when he is saying good-bye. She was grateful to her father for saying nothing to her about their meeting Vronsky, but she saw by his special warmth to her after the visit during their usual walk that he was pleased with her. She was pleased with herself. She had not expected she would have had the power, while keeping somewhere in the bottom of her heart all the memories of her old feeling for Vronsky, not only to seem but to be perfectly indifferent and composed with him. Levin flushed a great deal more than she when she told him she had met Vronsky at Princess Marya Borissovna's. It was very hard for her to tell him this, but still harder to go on speaking of the details of the meeting, as he did not question her, but simply gazed at her with a frown. 'I am very sorry you weren't there,' she said.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He pulled up the blind and rang the bell loudly. It was at once answered by the appearance of an old friend, his valet Matvey, carrying his clothes, his boots, and a telegram. Matvey was followed by the barber with all the necessaries for shaving. 'Are there any papers from the office?' asked Stepan Arkadyevitch, taking the telegram and seating himself at the looking-glass. 'On the table,' replied Matvey, glancing with inquiring sympathy at his master; and, after a short pause, he added with a sly smile, 'They've sent from the carriage-jobbers.' Stepan Arkadyevitch made no reply, he merely glanced at Matvey in the looking-glass. In the glance, in which their eyes met in the looking-glass, it was clear that they understood one another. Stepan Arkadyevitch's eyes asked: 'Why do you tell me that? don't you know?' Matvey put his hands in his jacket pockets, thrust out one leg, and gazed silently, good-humouredly, with a faint smile, at his master. 'I told them to come on Sunday, and till then not to trouble you or themselves for nothing,' he said. He had obviously prepared the sentence beforehand. Stepan Arkadyevitch saw Matvey wanted to make a joke and attract attention to himself. Tearing open the telegram, he read it through, guessing at the words, misspelt as they always are in telegrams, and his face brightened. 'Matvey, my sister Anna Arkadyevna will be here tomorrow,' he said, checking for a minute the sleek, plump hand of the barber, cutting a pink path through his long, curly whiskers. 'Thank God!' said Matvey, showing by this response that he, like his master, realised the significance of this arrival—that is, that Anna Arkadyevna, the sister he was so fond of, might bring about a reconciliation between husband and wife. 'Alone, or with her husband?' inquired Matvey. Stepan Arkadyevitch could not answer, as the barber was at work on his upper lip, and he raised one finger. Matvey nodded at the looking-glass. 'Alone. Is the room to be got ready upstairs ?' 'Inform Darya Alexandrovna: where she orders.' 'Darya Alexandrovna?' Matvey repeated, as though in doubt. 'Yes, inform her. Here, take the telegram; give it her, and then do what she tells you.' 'You want to try it on,' Matvey understood, but he only said, 'Yes, sir.' Stepan Arkadyevitch was already washed and combed and ready to be dressed, when Matvey, stepping deliberately in his creaky boots, came back into the room with the telegram in his hand. The barber had gone. 'Darya Alexandrovna told me to inform you that she is going away. Let him do—that is you—do as he likes,' he said, laughing only with his eyes, and putting his hands in his pockets, he watched his master with his head on one side. Stepan Arkadyevitch was silent a minute. Then a good-humoured and rather pitiful smile showed itself on his handsome face. 'Eh, Matvey?' he said, shaking his head. 'It's all right, sir; she will come round,' said Matvey. 'Come round?' 'Yes, sir.'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  But when he got out at his own station, when he saw his one-eyed coachman, Ignat, with the collar of his coat turned up; when, in the dim light reflected by the station fires, he saw his own sledge, his own horses with their tails tied up, in their harness trimmed with rings and tassels; when the coachman Ignat, as he put in his luggage, told him the village news, that the contractor had arrived, and that Pava had calved,—he felt that little by little the confusion was clearing up, and the shame and self-dissatisfaction were passing away. He felt this at the mere sight of Ignat and the horses; but when he had put on the sheepskin brought for him, had sat down wrapped up in the sledge, and had driven off pondering on the work that lay before him in the village, and staring at the side-horse, who had been his saddle-horse, past his prime now, but a spirited beast from the Don, he began to see what had happened to him in quite a different light. He felt himself, and did not want to be anyone else. All he wanted now was to be better than before. In the first place he resolved that from that day he would give up hoping for any extraordinary happiness, such as marriage must have given him, and consequently he would not so disdain what he really had. Secondly, he would never again let himself give way to love passion, the memory of which had so tortured him when he had been making up his mind to make an offer. Then remembering his brother Nikolay, he resolved to himself that he would never allow himself to forget him, that he would follow him up, and not lose sight of him, so as to be ready to help when things should go ill with him. And that would be soon, he felt. Then too his brother's talk of communism, which he had treated so lightly at the time, now made him think. He considered a revolution in economic conditions nonsense. But he always felt the injustice of his own abundance in comparison with the poverty of the peasants, and now he determined that so as to feel quite in the right, though he had worked hard and lived by no means luxuriously before, he would now work still harder, and would allow himself even less luxury. And all this seemed to him so easy a conquest over himself that he spent the whole drive in the pleasantest day-dreams. With a resolute feeling of hope in a new, better life, he reached home before nine o'clock at night. The snow of the little quadrangle before the house was lit up by a light in the bedroom windows of his old nurse, Agafea Mihalovna, who performed the duties of housekeeper in his house. She was not yet asleep. Kouzma, waked up by her, came sidling sleepily out on to the steps.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  As he pondered over subsequent developments, Alexey Alexandrovitch did not see, indeed, why his relations with his wife should not remain practically the same as before. No doubt, she could never regain his esteem, but there was not, and there could not be, any sort of reason that his existence should be troubled, and that he should suffer because she was a bad and faithless wife. 'Yes, time will pass, time, which arranges all things, and the old relations will be re-established,' Alexey Alexandrovitch told himself; 'so far re-established, that is, that I shall not be sensible of a break in the continuity of my life. She is bound to be unhappy, but I am not to blame, and so I cannot be unhappy.' XIV A S he neared Petersburg, Alexey Alexandrovitch not only adhered entirely to his decision, but was even composing in his head the letter he would write to his wife. Going into the porter's room, Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced at the letters and papers brought from his office, and directed that they should be brought to him in his study. 'The horses can be taken out and I will see no one,' he said in answer to the porter, with a certain pleasure, indicative of his agreeable frame of mind, emphasising the words, 'see no one.' In his study Alexey Alexandrovitch walked up and down twice, and stopped at an immense writing-table, on which six candles had already been lighted by the valet who had preceded him. He cracked his knuckles, and sat down, sorting out his writing appurtenances. Putting his elbows on the table, he bent his head on one side, thought a minute, and began to write, without pausing for a second. He wrote without using any form of address to her, and wrote in French, making use of the plural 'vous', which has not the same note of coldness as the corresponding Russian form. 'At our last conversation, I notified you of my intention to communicate to you my decision in regard to the subject of that conversation. Having carefully considered everything, I am writing now with the object of fulfilling that promise. My decision is as follows. Whatever your conduct may have been, I do not consider myself justified in breaking the ties in which we are bound by a Higher Power. The family cannot be broken up by a whim, a caprice, or even by the sin of one of the partners in the marriage, and our life must go on as it has done in the past. This is essential for me, for you, and for our son. I am fully persuaded that you have repented and do repent of what has called forth the present letter, and that you will co-operate with me in eradicating the cause of our estrangement, and forgetting the past. In the contrary event, you can conjecture what awaits you and your son. All this I hope to discuss more in detail in a personal interview.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Bowing to right and left to the people he met, and here as everywhere joyously greeting acquaintances, he went up to the sideboard for a preliminary appetiser of fish and vodka, and said to the painted Frenchwoman decked in ribbons, lace, and ringlets, behind the counter, something so amusing that even that Frenchwoman was moved to genuine laughter. Levin for his part refrained from taking any vodka simply because he felt such a loathing of that Frenchwoman, all made up, it seemed, of false hair, poudre de riz, and vinaigre de toilette. He made haste to move away from her, as from a dirty place. His whole soul was filled with memories of Kitty, and there was a smile of triumph and happiness shining in his eyes. 'This way, your excellency, please. Your excellency won't be disturbed here,' said a particularly pertinacious, white-headed old Tatar with immense hips and coat-tails gaping widely behind. 'Walk in, your excellency,' he said to Levin; by way of showing his respect to Stepan Arkadyevitch, being attentive to his guest as well. Instantly flinging a fresh cloth over the round table under the bronze chandelier, though it already had a tablecloth on it, he pushed up velvet chairs, and came to a standstill before Stepan Arkadyevitch with a napkin and a bill of fare in his hands, awaiting his commands. 'If you prefer it, your excellency, a private room will be free directly; Prince Golitsin with a lady. Fresh oysters have come in.' 'Ah! oysters.' Stepan Arkadyevitch became thoughtful. 'How if we were to change our programme, Levin?' he said, keep ing his finger on the bill of fare. And his face expressed serious hesitation. 'Are the oysters good? Mind now.' 'They're Flensburg, your excellency. We've no Ostend.' 'Flensburg will do, but are they fresh?' 'Only arrived yesterday.' 'Well, then, how if we were to begin with oysters, and so change the whole programme? Eh?' 'It's all the same to me. I should like cabbage soup and porridge better than anything; but of course there's nothing like that here.' 'Porridge à la Russe, your honour would like?' said the Tatar, bending down to Levin, like a nurse speaking to a child. 'No, joking apart, whatever you choose is sure to be good. I've been skating, and I'm hungry. And don't imagine,' he added, detecting a look of dissatisfaction on Oblonsky's face, 'that I shan't appreciate your choice. I am fond of good things.' 'I should hope so ! After all, it's one of the pleasures of life,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch. 'Well, then, my friend, you give us two—or better say three—dozen oysters, clear soup with vegetables. . . .' 'Printanière,' prompted the Tatar. But Stepan Arkadyevitch apparently did not care to allow him the satisfaction of giving the French names of the dishes. 'With vegetables in it, you know. Then turbot with thick sauce, then . . . roast beef; and mind it's good.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Oh, a great deal! And I know that he's her favourite; still one can see how chivalrous he is . . . Well, for instance, she told me that he had wanted to give up all his property to his brother, that he had done something extraordinary when he was quite a child, saved a woman out of the water. He's a hero, in fact,' said Anna, smiling and recollecting the two hundred roubles he had given at the station. But she did not tell Kitty about the two hundred roubles. For some reason it was disagreeable to her to think of it. She felt that there was something that had to do with her in it, and something that ought not to have been. 'She pressed me very much to go and see her,' Anna went on; 'and I shall be glad to go to see her tomorrow. Stiva is staying a long while in Dolly's room, thank God,' Anna added, changing the subject, and getting up, Kitty fancied, displeased with something. 'No, I'm first! No, I ! ' screamed the children, who had finished tea, running up to their Aunt Anna. 'All together!' said Anna, and she ran laughing to meet them, and embraced and swung round all the throng of swarming children, shrieking with delight. XXI D OLLY came out of her room to the tea of the grown-up people. Stepan Arkadyevitch did not come out. He must have left his wife's room by the other door. 'I am afraid you'll be cold upstairs,' observed Dolly, addressing Anna; 'I want to move you downstairs, and we shall be nearer.' 'Oh, please, don't trouble about me,' answered Anna, looking intently into Dolly's face, trying to make out whether there had been a reconciliation or not. 'It will be lighter for you here,' answered her sister-in-law. 'I assure you that I sleep everywhere, and always like a marmot.' 'What's the question?' inquired Stepan Arkadyevitch, coming out of his room and addressing his wife. From his tone both Kitty and Anna knew that a reconciliation had taken place. 'I want to move Anna downstairs, but we must hang up blinds. No one knows how to do it; I must see to it myself,' answered Dolly, addressing him. 'God knows whether they are fully reconciled,' thought Anna, hearing her tone, cold and composed. 'Oh, nonsense, Dolly, always making difficulties,' answered her husband. 'Come, I'll do it all, if you like . . . ' 'Yes, they must be reconciled,' thought Anna. 'I know how you do everything,' answered Dolly. 'You tell Matvey to do what can't be done, and go away yourself, leaving him to make a muddle of everything,' and her habitual mocking smile curved the corners of Dolly's lips as she spoke. 'Full, full reconciliation, full,' thought Anna; 'thank God!' and rejoicing that she was the cause of it, she went up to Dolly and kissed her. 'Not at all.