Anna Karenina

"I am not talking about you, not about you at all. You are perfection. Yes, yes, you are all perfection; but how can I help it if I am bad? It would not have happened if I were not bad. So let me be what I am, but not pretend...Let them live as they like, and I will live as I like. I cannot be different...And it's all not the thing, not the thing!"

"But what is not the thing?" said Varenka, quite perplexed.

"It's all not the thing. I can't live except by my own heart, but you live by principles. I have loved you quite simply, but you, I expect, only in order to save me, to teach me."

• Leo Tolstoy