Damasio quoted it at the end of Descartes' Error—that's when I knew it was meant to be.

So I read Anna Karenina last week, and it was brilliant and complex and precise and incisive. The unhappy families from the opening line are there, and the happy family is as well. By chronicling their respective developments, Tolstoy contrasts the dynamic of his ideal domestic situation with the ramifications of ill-fashioned relationships. Within this framework, he also explores the dominating ideas of intellectual Europe in the 19th century, weighing the merits and utility of the various philosophies being tossed around at the time. I wanted to quote copiously from this one as well, but I didn't want to spoil it for someone who hadn't read it; after all, my mom and sister held off on watching the movie until I could read it too.

But I do want to say that the spiritual consideration of the character whom Tolstoy modeled on himself is strikingly relevant still. Viewing the deterministic atheism of the materialists and the groundless mysticism of the various religiose movements with an equal dissatisfaction, he seeks to know that there is more than just him, living and dying. In the end, he rests in the idea of existence as miracle, and God thus as eminently evident.