Tenderness

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 Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Impossible! If he knew anyone, he would have known me,' said Kitty, in response to Agafea Mihalovna's statement, and she smiled. She smiled because, though she said he could not know her, in her heart she was sure that he knew not merely Agafea Mihalovna, but that he knew and understood everything, and knew and understood a great deal too that no one else knew, and that she, his mother, had learned and come to understand only through him. To Agafea Mihalovna, to the nurse, to his grandfather, to his father even, Mitya was a living being, requiring only material care, but for his mother he had long been a moral being, with whom there had been a whole series of spiritual relations already. 'When he wakes up, please God, you shall see for yourself. Then when I do like this, he simply beams on me, the darling! Simply beams like a sunny day!' said Agafea Mihalovna. 'Well, well; then we shall see,' whispered Kitty. 'But now go away, he's going to sleep.' VII A GAFEA M IHALOVNA went out on tiptoe; the nurse let down the blind, chased a fly out from under the muslin canopy of the crib, and a humble-bee struggling on the window-frame, and sat waving a faded branch of birch over the mother and the baby. 'How hot it is! if God would send a drop of rain,' she said. 'Yes, yes, sh—sh—sh—' was all Kitty answered, rocking a little, and tenderly squeezing the plump little arm, with rolls of fat at the wrist, which Mitya still waved feebly as he opened and shut his eyes. That hand worried Kitty; she longed to kiss the little hand, but was afraid to for fear of waking the baby. At last the little hand ceased waving, and the eyes closed. Only from time to time, as he went on sucking, the baby raised his long, curly eyelashes and peeped at his mother with wet eyes, that looked black in the twilight. The nurse had left off fanning, and was dozing. From above came the peals of the old prince's voice, and the chuckle of Katavasov. 'They have got into talk without me,' thought Kitty, 'but still it's vexing that Kostya's out. He's sure to have gone to the bee-house again. Though it's a pity he's there so often, still I'm glad. It distracts his mind. He's become altogether happier and better now than in the spring. He used to be so gloomy and worried that I felt frightened for him. And how absurd he is!' she whispered, smiling.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  I've ordered the horses to be put in.' 'What! You want to take Kitty in the wagonette?' her mother said reproachfully. 'Yes, at a walking-pace, princess.' Levin never called the princess 'maman' as men often do call their mothers-in-law, and the princess disliked his not doing so. But though he liked and respected the princess, Levin could not call her so without a sense of profaning his feeling for his dead mother. 'Come with us, maman,' said Kitty. 'I don't like to see such imprudence.' 'Well, I'll walk then, I'm so well.' Kitty got up and went to her husband and took his hand. 'You may be well, but everything in moderation,' said the princess. 'Well, Agafea Mihalovna, is the jam done?' said Levin, smiling to Agafea Mihalovna, and trying to cheer her up. 'Is it all right in the new way?' 'I suppose it's all right. For our notions it's boiled too long.' 'It'll be all the better, Agafea Mihalovna, it won't mildew, even though our ice has begun to thaw already, so that we've no cool cellar to store it,' said Kitty, at once divining her husband's motive, and addressing the old housekeeper with the same feeling; 'but your pickle's so good that mamma says she never tasted any like it,' she added, smiling, and putting her kerchief straight. Agafea Mihalovna looked angrily at Kitty. 'You needn't try to console me, mistress. I need only to look at you with him, and I feel happy,' she said, and something in the rough familiarity of that with him touched Kitty. 'Come along with us to look for mushrooms, you will show us the best places.' Agafea Mihalovna smiled and shook her head, as though to say: 'I should like to be angry with you too, but I can't.' 'Do it, please, by my receipt,' said the princess; 'put some paper over the jam, and moisten it with a little rum, and without even ice, it will never go mildewy.' III K ITTY was particularly glad of a chance of being alone with her husband, for she had noticed the shade of mortification that had passed over his face—always so quick to reflect every feeling—at the moment when he had come on to the terrace and asked what they were talking of, and had got no answer. When they had set off on foot ahead of the others, and had come out of sight of the house on to the beaten dusty road, marked with rusty wheels and sprinkled with grains of corn, she clung faster to his arm and pressed it closer to her.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  I feel all the while that they're annoyed, that they're saying, "What has he come for?"' 'No, they won't. I'll answer for that,' said Kitty, looking into his face with a laugh. She took his hand. 'Well, good-bye….Do go, please.' He was just going out after kissing his wife's hand, when she stopped him. 'Kostya, do you know I've only fifty roubles left?' 'Oh, all right, I'll go to the bank and get some. How much?' he said, with the expression of dissatisfaction she knew so well. 'No, wait a minute.' She held his hand. 'Let's talk about it, it worries me. I seem to spend nothing unnecessary, but money seems to fly away simply. We don't manage well, somehow.' 'Oh, it's all right,' he said, with a little cough, looking at her from under his brows. That cough she knew well. It was a sign of intense dissatisfaction, not with her, but with himself. He certainly was displeased not at so much money being spent, but at being reminded of what he, knowing something was unsatisfactory, wanted to forget. 'I have told Sokolov to sell the wheat, and to borrow an advance on the mill. We shall have money enough in any case.' 'Yes, but I'm afraid that altogether…' 'Oh, it's all right, all right,' he repeated. 'Well, good-bye darling.' 'No, I'm really sorry sometimes that I listened to mamma. How nice it would have been in the country! As it is, I'm worrying you all, and we're wasting our money.' 'Not at all, not at all. Not since I've been married have I said that things could have been better than they are….' 'Truly?' she said, looking into his eyes. He said it without thinking, simply to console her. But when he glanced at her and saw those sweet truthful eyes fastened questioningly on him, he repeated it with his whole heart. 'I was positively forgetting her,' he thought. And he remembered what was before them, so soon to come. 'Will it be soon? How do you feel?' he whispered, taking her two hands. 'I have so often thought so, that now I don't think about it or know anything about it.' 'And you're not frightened?' She smiled contemptuously. 'Not the least little bit,' she said. 'Well, if anything happens, I shall be at Katavasov's.' 'No, nothing will happen, and don't think about it. I'm going for a walk on the boulevard with papa. We're going to see Dolly. I shall expect you before dinner. Oh yes! Do you know that Dolly's position is becoming utterly impossible? She's in debt all round; she hasn't a penny. We were talking yesterday with mamma and Arseny' (this was. her sister's husband Lvov), 'and we determined to send you with him to talk to Stiva. It's really unbearable. One can't speak to papa about it . . .

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She was in pain and was, as it were, complaining to him of her suffering. And for the first minute, from habit, it seemed to him that he was to blame. But in her eyes there was a tenderness that told him that she was far from reproaching him, that she loved him for her sufferings. 'If not I, who is to blame for it?' he thought unconsciously, seeking someone responsible for this suffering for him to punish; but there was no one responsible. She was suffering, complaining, and triumphing in her sufferings, and rejoicing in them, and loving them. He saw that something sublime was being accomplished in her soul, but what? He could not make it out. It was beyond his understanding. 'I have sent to mamma. You go quickly to fetch Lizaveta Petrovna . . . Kostya! . . . Nothing, it's over.' She moved away from him and rang the bell. 'Well, go now; Pasha's coming. I am all right.' And Levin saw with astonishment that she had taken up the knitting she had brought in in the night and had begun working at it again. As Levin was going out of one door, he heard the maid-servant come in at the other. He stood at the door and heard Kitty giving exact directions to the maid, and beginning to help her move the bedstead. He dressed,' and while they were putting in his horses, as a hired sledge was not to be seen yet, he ran again up to the bedroom, not on tiptoe, it seemed to him, but on wings. Two maid-servants were carefully moving something in the bedroom. Kitty was walking about knitting rapidly and giving directions. 'I'm going for the doctor. They have sent for Lizaveta Petrovna, but I'll go on there too. Isn't there anything wanted? Yes, shall I go to Dolly's?' She looked at him, obviously not hearing what he was saying. 'Yes, yes. Do go,' she said quickly, frowning and waving her hand to him. He had just gone into the drawing-room, when suddenly a plaintive moan sounded from the bedroom, smothered instantly. He stood still, and for a long while he could not understand. 'Yes, that is she,' he said to himself, and clutching at his head he ran downstairs. 'Lord have mercy on us! pardon us! aid us!' he repeated the words that for some reason came suddenly to his lips. And he, an unbeliever, repeated these words not with his lips only. At that instant he knew that all his doubts, even the impossibility of believing with his reason, of which he was aware in himself, did not in the least hinder his turning to God. All of that now floated out of his soul like dust. To whom was he to turn if not to Him in whose hands he felt himself, his soul, and his love?

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'You didn't believe it, my sweet?' 'I knew, I knew!' he repeated his favourite phrase, and snatching the hand that was stroking his hair, he pressed the open palm to his mouth and kissed it. XXX M EANWHILE Vassily Lukitch had not at first understood who this lady was, and had learned from their conversation that it was no other person than the mother who had left her husband, and whom he had not seen, as he had entered the house after her departure. He was in doubt whether to go in or not, or whether to communicate with Alexey Alexandrovitch. Reflecting finally that his duty was to get Seryozha up at the hour fixed, and that it was therefore not his business to consider who was there, the mother or anyone else, but simply to do his duty, he finished dressing, went to the door and opened it. But the embraces of the mother and child, the sound of their voices, and what they were saying, made him change his mind. He shook his head, and with a sigh he closed the door. 'I'll wait another ten minutes,' he said to himself, clearing his throat and wiping away tears. Among the servants of the household there was intense excitement all this time. All had heard that their mistress had come, and that Kapitonitch had let her in, and that she was even now in the nursery, and that their master always went in person to the nursery at nine o'clock, and everyone fully comprehended that it was impossible for the husband and wife to meet, and that they must prevent it. Korney, the valet, going down to the hall-porter's room, asked who had let her in, and how it was he had done so, and ascertaining that Kapitonitch had admitted her and shown her up, he gave the old man a talking-to. The hall-porter was doggedly silent, but when Korney told him he ought to be sent away, Kapitonitch darted up to him, and waving his hands in Korney's face, began— 'Oh yes, to be sure you'd not have let her in! After ten years' service, and never a word but of kindness, and there you'd up and say, "Be off, go along, get away with you!" Oh yes, you're a shrewd one at politics, I dare say! You don't need to be taught how to swindle the master, and to filch fur-coats!' 'Soldier!' said Korney contemptuously, and he turned to the nurse who was coming in. 'Here, what do you think, Marya Efimovna: he let Her in without a word to anyone,' Korney said addressing her. 'Alexey Alexandrovitch will be down immediately—and go into the nursery!' 'A pretty business, a pretty business!' said the nurse. 'You Korney Vassilievitch, you'd best keep him some way or other, the master, while I'll run and get her away somehow.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She herself went several times to her room, regardless of the men she met in the corridor, got out and brought in sheets, pillow-cases, towels, and shirts. The waiter, who was busy with a party of engineers dining in the dining-hall, came several times with an irate countenance in answer to her summons, and could not avoid carrying out her orders, as she gave them with such gracious insistence that there was no evading her. Levin did not approve of all this; he did not believe it would be any good to the patient. Above all he was afraid the patient would be angry at it. But the sick man, though he seemed and was indifferent about it, was not angry, but only abashed, and on the whole as it were interested in what she was doing with him. Coming back from the doctor to whom Kitty had sent him, Levin, on opening the door, came upon the sick man at the instant when, by Kitty's directions, they were changing his linen. The long white ridge of his spine, with the huge, prominent, shoulder-blades and jutting ribs and vertebrae, was bare, and Marya Nikolaevna and the waiter were struggling with the sleeve of the nightshirt, and could not get the long, limp arm into it. Kitty, hurriedly closing the door after Levin, was not looking that way; but the sick man groaned, and she moved rapidly towards him. 'Make haste,' she said. 'Oh, don't you come,' said the sick man angrily. 'I'll do it myself….' 'What say?' queried Marya Nikolaevna. But Kitty heard and saw he was ashamed and uncomfortable at being naked before her. 'I'm not looking, I'm not looking!' she said, putting the arm in. 'Marya Nikolaevna, you come this side, you do it,' she added. 'Please go for me, there's a little bottle in my small bag,' she said, turning to her husband, 'you know, in the side pocket; bring it, please, and meanwhile they'll finish clearing up here.' Returning with the bottle, Levin found the sick man settled comfortably and everything about him completely changed. The heavy smell was replaced by the smell of aromatic vinegar, which Kitty with pouting lips and puffed-out, rosy cheeks was squirting through a little pipe. There was no dust visible anywhere, a rug was laid by the bedside. On the table stood medicine bottles and decanters tidily arranged, and the linen needed was folded up there, and Kitty's broderie anglaise.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'It's Sergey Ivanovitch and Katavasov, a professor,' she said. 'Oh, that's a bore in this heat,' said the prince. 'No, papa, he's very nice, and Kostya's very fond of him,' Kitty said, with a deprecating smile, noticing the irony on her father's face. 'Oh, I didn't say anything.' 'You go to them, darling,' said Kitty to her sister, 'and entertain them. They saw Stiva at the station; he was quite well. And I must run to Mitya. As ill-luck would have it, I haven't fed him since tea. He's awake now, and sure to be screaming.' And feeling a rush of milk, she hurried to the nursery. This was not a mere guess; her connection with the child was still so close, that she could gauge by the flow of her milk his need of food, and knew for certain he was hungry. She knew he was crying before she reached the nursery. And he was indeed crying. She heard him and hastened. But the faster she went, the louder he screamed. It was a fine healthy scream, hungry and impatient. 'Has he been screaming long, nurse, very long?' said Kitty hurriedly, seating herself on a chair, and preparing to give the baby the breast. 'But give me him quickly. Oh, nurse, how tiresome you are! There, tie the cap afterwards, do!' The baby's greedy scream was passing into sobs. 'But you can't manage so, ma'am,' said Agafea Mihalovna, who was almost always to be found in the nursery. 'He must be put straight. A-oo! a-oo !' she chanted over him, paying no attention to the mother. The nurse brought the baby to his mother. Agafea Mihalovna followed him with a face dissolving with tenderness. 'He knows me, he knows me. In God's faith, Katerina Alexandrovna, ma'am, he knew me!' Agafea Mihalovna cried above the baby's screams. But Kitty did not heed her words. Her impatience kept growing, like the baby's. Their impatience hindered things for a while. The baby could not get hold of the breast right, and was furious. At last, after despairing, breathless screaming, and vain sucking, things went right, and mother and child felt simultaneously soothed, and both subsided into calm. 'But poor darling, he's all in perspiration!' said Kitty in a whisper, touching the baby. 'What makes you think he knows you?' she added, with a sidelong glance at the baby's eyes, that peered roguishly, as she fancied, from under his cap, at his rhythmically puffing cheeks, and the little red-palmed hand he was waving.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He looked a long, tender look at her. 'No, not very,' he said. And it seemed to her that she understood everything, most of all, that he was pleased with her; and smiling to him, she walked with her rapid step out at the door. The friends glanced at one another, and a look of hesitation came into both faces, as though Golenishtchev, unmistakably admiring her, would have liked to say something about her, and could not find the right thing to say, while Vronsky desired and dreaded his doing so. 'Well then,' Vronsky began to start a conversation of some sort; 'so you're settled here? You're still at the same work, then?' he went on, recalling that he had been told Golenishtchev was writing something. 'Yes, I'm writing the second part of the Two Elements,' said Golenishtchev, colouring with pleasure at the question—'that is, to be exact, I am not writing it yet; I am preparing, collecting materials. It will be of far wider scope, and will touch on almost all questions. We in Russia refuse to see that we are the heirs of Byzantium,' and he launched into a long and heated explanation of his views. Vronsky at the first moment felt embarrassed at not even knowing of the first part of the Two Elements, of which the author spoke as something well known. But as Golenishtchev began to lay down his opinions and Vronsky was able to follow them even without knowing the Two Elements, he listened to him with some interest, for Golenishtchev spoke well. But Vronsky was startled and annoyed by the nervous irascibility with which Golenishtchev talked of the subject that engrossed him. As he went on talking, his eyes glittered more and more angrily; he was more and more hurried in his replies to imaginary opponents, and his face grew more and more excited and worried. Remembering Golenishtchev, a thin, lively, good-natured and well-bred boy, always at the head of the class, Vronsky could not make out the reason of his irritability, and he did not like it. What he particularly disliked was that Golenishtchev, a man belonging to a good set, should put himself on a level with some scribbling fellows, with whom he was irritated and angry. Was it worth it?

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Still thinking of Anna, of everything, even the simplest phrase in their conversation with her, and recalling the minutest changes in her expression, entering more and more into her position, and feeling sympathy for her, Levin reached home. At home Kouzma told Levin that Katerina Alexandrovna was quite well, and that her sisters had not long been gone, and he handed him two letters. Levin read them at once in the hall, that he might not overlook them later. One was from Sokolov, his bailiff. Sokolov wrote that the corn could not be sold, that it was fetching only five and a half roubles, and that more than that could not be got for it. The other letter was from his sister. She scolded him for her business being still unsettled. 'Well, we must sell it at five and a half if we can't get more,' Levin decided the first question, which had always before seemed such a weighty one, with extraordinary facility on the spot. 'It's extraordinary how all one's time is taken up here,' he thought, considering the second letter. He felt himself to blame for not having got done what his sister had asked him to do for her. 'Today, again, I've not been to the court, but today I've certainly not had time.' And resolving that he would not fail to do it next day, he went up to his wife. As he went in, Levin rapidly ran through mentally the day he had spent. All the events of the day were conversations, conversations he had heard and taken part in. All the conversations were upon subjects which, if he had been alone at home, he would never have taken up, but here they were very interesting. And all these conversations were right enough, only in two places there was something not quite right. One was what he had said about the carp, the other was something not 'quite the thing' in the tender sympathy he was feeling for Anna. Levin found his wife low-spirited and dull. The dinner of the three sisters had gone off very well, but then they had waited and waited for him, all of them had felt dull, the sisters had departed, and she had been left alone. 'Well, and what have you been doing?' she asked him, looking straight into his eyes, which shone with rather a suspicious brightness. But that she might not prevent his telling her everything, she concealed her close scrutiny of him, and with an approving smile listened to his account of how he had spent the evening. 'Well, I'm very glad I met Vronsky. I felt quite at ease and natural with him. You understand, I shall try not to see him, but I'm glad that this awkwardness is all over,' he said, and remembering that by way of trying not to see him, he had immediately gone to call on Anna, he blushed.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'It was jolly of you to make up your mind to come,' he said to him. 'I've been meaning to a long while. Now we shall have some discussion, we'll see to that. Have you been reading Spencer?' 'No, I've not finished reading him,' said Levin. 'But I don't need him now.' 'How's that? that's interesting. Why so?' 'I mean that I'm fully convinced that the solution of the problems that interest me I shall never find in him and his like. Now . . .' But Katavasov's serene and good-humoured expression suddenly struck him, and he felt such tenderness for his own happy mood, which he was unmistakably disturbing by this conversation, that he remembered his resolution and stopped short. 'But we'll talk later on,' he added. 'If we're going to the bee-house, it's this way, along this little path,' he said, addressing them all. Going along the narrow path to the little uncut meadow covered on one side with thick clumps of brilliant heart's-ease among which stood up here and there tall, dark green tufts of hellebore, Levin settled his guests in the dense, cool shade of the young aspens on a bench and some stumps purposely put there for visitors to the bee-house who might be afraid of the bees, and he went off himself to the hut to get bread, cucumbers, and fresh honey, to regale them with. Trying to make his movements as deliberate as possible, and listening to the bees that buzzed more and more frequently past him, he walked along the little path to the hut. In the very entry one bee hummed angrily, caught in his beard, but he carefully extricated it. Going into the shady outer room, he took down from the wall his veil, that hung on a peg, and putting it on, and thrusting his hands into his pockets, he went into the fenced-in bee-garden, where there stood in the midst of a closely mown space in regular rows, fastened with bast on posts, all the hives he knew so well, the old stocks, each with its own history, and along the fences the younger swarms hived that year. In front of the openings of the hives, it made his eyes giddy to watch the bees and drones whirling round and round about the same spot, while among them the working bees flew in and out with spoils or in search of them, always in the same direction into the wood to the flowering lime-trees and back to the hives. His ears were filled with the incessant hum in various notes, now the busy hum of the working bee flying quickly off, then the blaring of the lazy drone, and the excited buzz of the bees on guard protecting their property from the enemy and preparing to sting. On the farther side of the fence the old beekeeper was shaving a hoop for a tub, and he did not see Levin.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  It shows that at last a reasonable and steady view of the matter is becoming prevalent among us.' Having drunk his second cup of tea with cream, and bread, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up, and was going towards his study. 'And you've not been anywhere this evening? You've been dull, I expect?' he said. 'Oh no!' she answered, getting up after him and accompanying him across the room to his study. 'What are you reading now?' she asked. 'Just now I'm reading Duc de Lille, Poésie des Enfers,' he answered. 'A very remarkable book.' Anna smiled, as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love, and, putting her hand under his, she escorted him to the door of the study. She knew his habit, that had grown into a necessity, of reading in the evening. She knew, too, that in spite of his official duties, which swallowed up almost the whole of his time, he considered it his duty to keep up with everything of note that appeared in the intellectual world. She knew, too, that he was really interested in books dealing with politics, philosophy, and theology, that art was utterly foreign to his nature; but, in spite of this, or rather, in consequence of it, Alexey Alexandrovitch never missed over anything in the world of art, but made it his duty to read everything. She knew that in politics, in philosophy, in theology, Alexey Alexandrovitch often had doubts, and made investigations; but on questions of art and poetry, and, above all, of music, of which he was totally devoid of understanding, he had the most distinct and decided opinions. He was fond of talking about Shakespeare, Raphael, Beethoven, of the significance of new schools of poetry and music, all of which were classified by him with very conspicuous consistency. 'Well, God be with you,' she said at the door of the study, where a shaded candle and a decanter of water were already put by his armchair. 'And I'll write to Moscow.' He pressed her hand, and again kissed it. 'All the same he's a good man; truthful, good-hearted, and remarkable in his own line,' Anna said to herself going back to her room, as though she were defending him to someone who had attacked him and said that one could not love him. 'But why is it his ears stick out so strangely? Or has he had his hair cut?'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Delightful child, delightful ! Show me them all.' She mentioned them, not only remembering the names, but the years, months, characters, illnesses of all the children, and Dolly could not but appreciate that. 'Very well, we will go to them,' she said. 'It's a pity Vassya's asleep.' After seeing the children, they sat down, alone now, in the drawing-room, to coffee. Anna took the tray, and then pushed it away from her. 'Dolly,' she said, 'he has told me.' Dolly looked coldly at Anna; she was waiting now for phrases of conventional sympathy, but Anna said nothing of the sort. 'Dolly, dear,' she said, 'I don't want to speak for him to you, nor to try to comfort you; that's impossible. But, darling, I'm simply sorry, sorry from my heart for you!' Under the thick lashes of her shining eyes tears suddenly glittered. She moved nearer to her sister-in-law and took her hand in her vigorous little hand. Dolly did not shrink away, but her face did not lose its frigid expression. She said— 'To comfort me's impossible. Everything's lost after what has happened, everything's over!' And directly she had said this, her face suddenly softened. Anna lifted the wasted, thin hand of Dolly, kissed it and said— 'But, Dolly, what's to be done, what's to be done? How is it best to act in this awful position—that's what you must think of.' 'All's over, and there's nothing more,' said Dolly. 'And the worst of it all is, you see, that I can't cast him off: there are the children, I am tied. And I can't live with him; it's a torture to me to see him.' 'Dolly, darling, he has spoken to me, but I want to hear it from you: tell me all about it.' Dolly looked at her inquiringly. Sympathy and love unfeigned were visible on Anna's face. 'Very well,' she said all at once. 'But I will tell you it from the beginning. You know how I was married. With the education mamma gave us I was more than innocent, I was stupid. I knew nothing. I know they say men tell their wives of their former lives, but Stiva—' she corrected herself—'Stepan Arkadyevitch told me nothing. You'll hardly believe it, but till now I imagined that I was the only woman he had known. So I lived eight years. You must understand that I was so far from suspecting infidelity, I regarded it as impossible, and then— try to imagine it—with such ideas to find out suddenly all the horror, all the loathsomeness . . . You must try and understand me. To be fully convinced of one's happiness, and all at once . . .

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'With her complexion, it's the one salvation,' responded Madame Trubetsky. 'I wonder why they had the wedding in the evening? It's like shop-people . . . ' 'So much prettier. I was married in the evening too . . .' answered Madame Korsunsky, and she sighed, remembering how charming she had been that day, and how absurdly in love her husband was, and how different it all was now. 'They say if any one's best man more than ten times, he'll never be married. I wanted to be for the tenth time, but the post was taken,' said Count Siniavin to the pretty Princess Tcharsky, who had designs on him. Princess Tcharsky only answered with a smile. She looked at Kitty, thinking how and when she would stand with Count Siniavin in Kitty's place, and how she would remind him then of his joke today. Shtcherbatsky told the old maid of honour, Madame Nikolaev, that he meant to put the crown on Kitty's chignon for luck. 'She ought not to have worn a chignon,' answered Madame Nikolaev, who had long ago made up her mind that if the elderly widower she was angling for married her, the wedding should be of the simplest. 'I don't like such grandeur.' Sergey Ivanovitch was talking to Darya Dmitrievna, jestingly assuring her that the custom of going away after the wedding was becoming common because newly married people always felt a little ashamed of themselves. 'Your brother may feel proud of himself. She's a marvel of sweetness. I believe you're envious.' 'Oh, I've got over that, Darya Dmitrievna,' he answered, and a melancholy and serious expression suddenly came over his face. Stepan Arkadyevitch was telling his sister-in-law his joke about divorce. 'The wreath wants setting straight,' she answered, not hearing him. 'What a pity she's lost her looks so,' Countess Nordston said to Madame Lvov. 'Still he's not worth her little finger, is he?' 'Oh, I like him so—not because he's my future beau-frère,' answered Madame Lvov. 'And how well he's behaving! It's so difficult, too, to look well in such a position, not to be ridiculous. And he's not ridiculous, and not affected; one can see he's moved.' 'You expected it, I suppose?' 'Almost. She always cared for him.' 'Well, we shall see which of them will step on the rug first. I warned Kitty.' 'It will make no difference,' said Madame Lvov; 'we're all obedient wives; it's in our family.' 'Oh, I stepped on the rug before Vassily on purpose. And you, Dolly?' Dolly stood beside them; she heard them, but she did not answer. She was deeply moved. The tears stood in her eyes, and she could not have spoken without crying.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'I felt unwell,' she said, smiling a particularly sweet and meaning smile. 'What? has it begun?' he said in terror. 'We ought to send . . .' and hurriedly he reached after his clothes. 'No, no,' she said, smiling and holding his hand. 'It's sure to be nothing. I was rather unwell, only a little. It's all over now.' And getting into bed, she blew out the candle, lay down and was still. Though he thought her stillness suspicious, as though she were holding her breath, and still more suspicious the expression of peculiar tenderness and excitement with which, as she came from behind the screen, she said 'nothing', he was so sleepy that he fell asleep at once. Only later he remembered the stillness of her breathing, and understood all that must have been passing in her sweet, precious heart while she lay beside him, not stirring, in anticipation of the greatest event in a woman's life. At seven o'clock he was waked by the touch of her hand on his shoulder, and a gentle whisper. She seemed struggling between regret at waking him, and the desire to talk to him. 'Kostya, don't be frightened. It's all right. But I fancy . . . We ought to send for Lizaveta Petrovna.' The candle was lighted again. She was sitting up in bed, holding some knitting, which she had been busy upon during the last few days. 'Please, don't be frightened, it's all right. I'm not a bit afraid,' she said, seeing his scared face, and she pressed his hand to her bosom and then to her lips. He hurriedly jumped up, hardly awake, and kept his eyes fixed on her, as he put on his dressing-gown; then he stopped, still looking at her. He had to go, but he could not tear himself from her eyes. He thought he loved her face, knew her expression, her eyes, but never had he seen it like this. How hateful and horrible he seemed to himself, thinking of the distress he had caused her yesterday. Her flushed face, fringed with soft curling hair under her night-cap, was radiant with joy and courage. Though there was so little that was complex or artificial in Kitty's character in general, Levin was struck by what was revealed now, when suddenly all disguises were thrown off and the very kernel of her soul shone in her eyes. And in this simplicity and nakedness of her soul, she, the very woman he loved in her, was more manifest than ever. She looked at him, smiling; but all at once her brows twitched, she threw up her head, and going quickly up to him, clutched his hand and pressed close up to him, breathing her hot breath upon him.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Kitty asked apprehensively, catching the gleam of irony that kindled in the prince's eyes at the mention of Madame Stahl. 'I used to know her husband, and her too a little, before she'd joined the Pietists.' 'What is a Pietist, papa?' asked Kitty, dismayed to find that what she prized so highly in Madame Stahl had a name. 'I don't quite know myself. I only know that she thanks God for everything, for every misfortune, and thanks God too that her husband died. And that's rather droll, as they didn't get on together.' 'Who's that? What a piteous face!' he asked, noticing a sick man of medium height sitting on a bench, wearing a brown overcoat and white trousers that fell in strange folds about his long, fleshless legs. This man lifted his straw hat, showed his scanty curly hair and high forehead, painfully reddened by the pressure of the hat. 'That's Petrov, an artist,' answered Kitty, blushing. 'And that's his wife,' she added, indicating Anna Pavlovna, who, as though on purpose, at the very instant they approached walked away after a child that had run off along a path. 'Poor fellow! and what a nice face he has!' said the prince. 'Why don't you go up to him? He wanted to speak to you.' 'Well, let us go, then,' said Kitty, turning round resolutely. 'How are you feeling today?' she asked Petrov. Petrov got up, leaning on his stick, and looked shyly at the prince. This is my daughter,' said the prince. 'Let me introduce myself.' The painter bowed and smiled, showing his strangely dazzling white teeth. 'We expected you yesterday, princess,' he said to Kitty. He staggered as he said this, and then repeated the motion, trying to make it seem as if it had been intentional. 'I meant to come, but Varenka said that Anna Pavlovna sent word you were not going.' 'Not going!' said Petrov, blushing, and immediately beginning to cough, and his eyes sought his wife. 'Anita! Anita!' he said loudly, and the swollen veins stood out like cords on his thin white neck. Anna Pavlovna came up. 'So you sent word to the princess that we weren't going!' he whispered to her angrily, losing his voice. 'Good morning, princess,' said Anna Pavlovna, with an assumed smile utterly unlike her former manner. 'Very glad to make your acquaintance,' she said to the prince. 'You've long been expected, prince.' 'What did you send word to the princess that we weren't going for?' the artist whispered hoarsely once more, still more angrily, obviously exasperated, that his voice failed him so that he could not give his words the expression he would have liked to. 'Oh, mercy on us! I thought we weren't going,' his wife answered crossly. 'What, when . . .' He coughed and waved his hand. The prince took off his hat and moved away with his daughter. 'Ah! ah!' he sighed deeply. 'Oh, poor things!' 'Yes, papa,' answered Kitty.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  ' 'Dolly, hush, darling. I saw Stiva when he was in love with you. I remember the time when he came to me and cried, talking of you, and all the poetry and loftiness of his feeling for you, and I know that the longer he has lived with you the loftier you have been in his eyes. You know we have sometimes laughed at him for putting in at every word: "Dolly's a marvellous woman." You have always been a divinity for him, and you are that still, and this has not been an infidelity of the heart….' 'But if it is repeated?' 'It cannot be, as I understand it….' 'Yes, but could you forgive it?' 'I don't know, I can't judge. . . . Yes, I can,' said Anna, thinking a moment; and grasping the position in her thought and weighing it in her inner balance, she added: 'Yes, I can, I can, I can. Yes, I could forgive it. I could not be the same, no; but I could forgive it, and forgive it as though it had never been, never been at all. . . .' 'Oh, of course,' Dolly interposed quickly, as though saying what she had more than once thought, 'else it would not be forgiveness. If one forgives, it must be completely, completely. Come, let us go; I'll take you to your room,' she said, getting up, and on the way she embraced Anna. 'My dear, how glad I am you came. It has made things better, ever so much better.' XX T HE whole of that day Anna spent at home, that's to say at the Oblonskys', and received no one, though some of her acquaintances had already heard of her arrival, and came to call the same day. Anna spent the whole morning with Dolly and the children. She merely sent a brief note to her brother to tell him that he must not fail to dine at home. 'Come, God is merciful,' she wrote. Oblonsky did dine at home: the conversation was general, and his wife, in speaking to him, addressed him as 'Stiva', as she had not done before. In the relations of the husband and wife the same estrangement still remained, but there was no talk now of separation, and Stepan Arkadyevitch saw the possibility of explanation and reconciliation. Immediately after dinner Kitty came in.

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

  It is the sense of a sameness perceived by thought and predicated of things thought-about . These things are a present self and a self of yesterday. The thought not only thinks them both, but thinks that they are identical. The psychologist, looking on and playing the critic, might prove the thought wrong, and show there was no real identity,—there might have been no yesterday, or, at any rate, no self of yesterday; or, if there were, the sameness predicated might not obtain, or might be predicated on insufficient grounds. In either case the personal identity would not exist as a fact ; but it would exist as a feeling all the same; the consciousness of it by the thought would be there, and the psychologist would still have to analyze that, and show where its illusoriness lay. Let us now be the psychologist and see whether it be right or wrong when it says, I am the same self that I was yesterday . We may immediately call it right and intelligible so far as it posits a past time with past thoughts or selves contained therein—these were data which we assumed at the outset of the book. Right also and intelligible so far as it thinks of a present self—that present self we have just studied in its various forms. The only question for us is as to what the consciousness may mean when it calls the present self the same with one of the past selves which it has in mind. We spoke a moment since of warmth and intimacy. This leads us to the answer sought. For, whatever the thought we are criticising may think about its present self, that self comes to its acquaintance, or is actually felt, with warmth and intimacy. Of course this is the case with the bodily part of it; we feel the whole cubic mass of our body all the while, it gives us an unceasing sense of personal existence. Equally do we feel the inner 'nucleus of the spiritual self,' either in the shape of yon faint physiological adjustments, or (adopting the universal psychological belief), in that of the pure activity of our thought taking place as such. Our remoter spiritual, material, and social selves, so far as they are realized, come also with a glow and a warmth; for the thought of them infallibly brings some degree of organic emotion in the shape of quickened heart-beats, oppressed breathing, or some other alteration, even though it be a slight one, in the general bodily tone. The character of 'warmth,' then, in the present self, reduces itself to either of two things,—something in the feeling which we have of the thought itself, as thinking, or else the feeling of the body's actual existence at the moment,—or finally to both.

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

  It never is overcome in some people, whose work, to the end of life, gets done in the interstices of their mind-wandering. The passive sensorial attention is derived when the impression, without being either strong or of an instinctively exciting nature, is connected by previous experience and education with things that are so. These things may be called the motives of the attention. The impression draws an interest from them, or perhaps it even fuses into a single complex object with them; the result is that it is brought into the focus of the mind. A faint tap per se is not an interesting sound; it may well escape being discriminated from the general rumor of the world. But when it is a signal, as that of a lover on the window-pane, it will hardly go unperceived. Herbart writes: "How a bit of bad grammar wounds the ear of the purist! How a false note hurts the musician! or an offence against good manners the man of the world! How rapid is progress in a science when its first principles have been so well impressed upon us that we reproduce them mentally with perfect distinctness and ease! How slow and uncertain, on the other hand, is our learning of the principles themselves, when familiarity with the still more elementary percepts connected with the subject has not given us an adequate predisposition!—Apperceptive attention may be plainly observed in very small children when, hearing the speech of their elders, as yet unintelligible to them, they suddenly catch a single known word here and there, and repeat it to themselves; yes! even in the dog who looks round at us when we speak of him and pronounce his name. Not far removed is the talent which mind-wandering school-boys display during the hours of instruction, of noticing every moment in which the teacher tells a story. I remember classes in which, instruction being uninteresting, and discipline relaxed, a buzzing murmur was always to be heard, which invariably stopped for as long a time as an anecdote lasted.

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

  "An imaginative child will make a dog do duty for a horse, or a soldier for a shepherd, till at last the objective resemblance almost disappears, and a bit of wood may be dragged about, resembling a ship on the sea or a coach on the road. Here the likeness of the bit of wood to a ship or coach is very slight indeed; but it is a thing, and can be moved about, ... and is an evident assistance to the child in enabling it to arrange and develop its ideas.... Of how much use... may be seen by taking it away, and leaving the child nothing to play with. ...In later years and among highly educated people the mental process which goes on in a child's playing with wooden soldiers and horses, though it never disappears, must be sought for in more complex phenomena. Perhaps nothing in after-life more closely resembles the effect of a doll upon a child than the effect of the illustrations of a tale upon a grown reader. Here the objective resemblance is very indefinite ...yet what reality is given to the scene by a good picture. ... Mr. Back-house one day noticed in Van Diemen's Land a woman arranging several stones that were hat, oval, and about, two inches wide, and marked in various directions with black and red lines. These, he learned, represented absent friends, and one larger than the rest stood for a fat native woman on Flinder's Island, known by the name of Mother Brown. Similar practices are found among far higher races than the ill-fated Tasmanians. Among some North American tribes another who has lost a child keeps its memory ever present to her by filling its cradle with black feathers and quills, and carrying it about with her for a year or more. When she stops anywhere, she sets up the cradle and talks to it as she goes about her work, just as she would have done if the dead body had been still alive within it. Here we have an image; but in Africa we find a rude doll representing the child, kept as a memorial. ... Bastian saw Indian women in Peru who had lost an infant carrying about on their backs a wooden doll to represent it."[321]

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

  The judgment here is certainly an inference from sensible signs, and its ease is due to long practice in the particular field.[224] The result of it, however, is that the consciousness is, for itself , not what it was in the former case, but interrupted and continuous, in the mere time-sense of the words. But in the other sense of continuity, the sense of the parts being inwardly connected and belonging together because they are parts of a common whole, the consciousness remains sensibly continuous and one. What now is the common whole? The natural name for it is myself, I , or me . When Paul and Peter wake up in the same bed, and recognize that they have been asleep, each one of them mentally reaches back and makes connection with but one of the two streams of thought which were broken by the sleeping hours. As the current of an electrode buried in the ground unerringly finds its way to its own similarly buried mate, across no matter how much intervening earth; so Peter's present instantly finds out Peter's past, and never by mistake knits itself on to that of Paul. Paul's thought in turn is as little liable to go astray. The past thought of Peter is appropriated by the present Peter alone. He may have a knowledge , and a correct one too, of what Paul's last drowsy states of mind were as he sank into sleep, but it is an entirely different sort of knowledge from that which he has of his own last states. He remembers his own states, whilst he only conceives Paul's. Remembrance is like direct feeling; its object is suffused with a warmth and intimacy to which no object of mere conception ever attains. This quality of warmth and intimacy and immediacy is what Peter's present thought also possesses for itself. So sure as this present is me, is mine, it says, so sure is anything else that comes with the same warmth and intimacy and immediacy, me and mine. What the qualities called warmth and intimacy may in themselves be will have to be matter for future consideration. But whatever past feeling appear with those qualities must be admitted to receive the greeting of the present mental state, to be owned by it, and accepted as belonging together with it in a common self. This community of self is what the time-gap cannot break in twain, and is why a present thought, although not ignorant of the time-gap, can still regard itself as continuous with certain chosen portions of the past. Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; if flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described.