Theory of dairy farming

Darya Aleksandrov Oblonsky and Konstantin Dimitrievich Levin are talking about cows. Levin would like the keep the conversation from straying to the subject of Darya’s sister Katerina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya.

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, translated by Constance Garnett, revised by Leonard J. Kent and Nina Berberova (New York: Modern Library, 2000).

Casual speculation: I wonder if this passage is the inspiration for the famous quip “A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems,” often attributed to Paul Erdős. Erdős, however, credited Alfred Rényi.

Also from this novel
“The turning point of summer”