I can't help repeating this quotation provided by that ever-excellent cornucopia, In Pursuit of Copiousness - do pay them a visit and sign on to receive their daily quotations by e-mail. This from Tolstoy - and no, I have never read War and Peace, in fact, I have never read any Tolstoy. Have I missed something - and should I be scolded or congratulated? I don't know but this example of wit as dry as one of my martinis made me smile:
“Levin had been married three months. He was happy, but not at all in the way he
had expected to be. At every step he found his former dreams disappointed, and
new, unexpected surprises of happiness. He was happy; but on entering upon
family life he saw at every step that it was utterly different than what he had
imagined. At every step he experienced what a man might experience who, after
admiring the smooth, happy course of a little boat on a lake, should get himself
into that little boat. He saw that it was not all sitting still, floating
smoothly; that one had to think too, not for instant to forget where one was
floating; and that there was water under one, and that one must row; and that
his unaccustomed hands would be sore; and that it was only to look at it that
was easy; but that doing it, though very delightful, was difficult.”
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (p. 223)
