"This new feeling hasn't changed me, hasn't made me happy or suddenly enlightened, as I dreamed- just like the feeling for my son. Nor was there any surprise. And faith or no faith- I don't know what it is- but this feeling has entered into me just as imperceptibly through suffering and has firmly lodged itself in my soul.
I'll get angry in the same way with the coachman Ivan, argue in the same way, speak my mind inappropriately. There will be some wall between my soul's holy of hollies and other people, even my wife, I'' accuse her the same way of my own fear and then regret it, I'll fail in the same way to understand with my reason why I pray, and yet I will pray- but my life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which is in my power to put into it."
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Tolstoy compared to Turgenev, Pushkin, Gogol and Dostoevsky is somewhat of a moralist, hoping for the good in humanity, the hope of redemption such as the character in Anna Karenina. I mean, all the others focus on the weakness of humanity, the oddities, the dreams- while Tolstoy emphasizes the sin, how it can eat at you, while redemption is always there. I prefer the others to Tolstoy- too optimistic for my taste- even though of course, he is right- it is better to have hope. For where would we be without it?
And goodness, out of the thousand and something pages- one quote!
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