Anna's dream didn't work out, but it was a concept the author thought worth considering.'She dreamed that both were her husbands at once, that both were lavishing caresses on her. Alexey Alexandrovitch was weeping, kissing her hands, and saying, “How happy we are now!” And Alexey Vronsky was there too, and he too was her husband. And she was marveling that it had once seemed impossible to her, was explaining to them, laughing, that this was ever so much simpler, and that now both of them were happy and contented.'
—Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy, 1878, 2.11
'Two men, her husband and her lover, were the two centers of her existence.' ibid., 2.28
Do you have your own favorite passages from great books?