more a.k. - oops, this is gonna be long

speaking of levin (a man, not yeast):

"He felt that he was himself again and he did not wish to be anyone else. All he wanted now was to be better than he had been before. To begin with, he decided that from that day on he would stop looking for any extraordinary happiness such as marriage was to have given him, and that consequently he would no longer think little of what he possessed at present...And it all seemed to him so easy to carry out that the whole way home he spent in a most pleasant daydream...

"He went into his study...The familiar objects in the room were revealed...When he saw all this, he was for a moment overcome by a feeling of doubt of the possibility of starting the new life he had been dreaming of during his drive home. All these traces of his old life seemed to seize hold of him, saying 'No, you won't get away from us, and you're not going to be different; you're going to be just the same as you've always been with your doubts, with your everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, your vain attempts at reform, your falling from grace, and the constant expectation of the happiness you have missed and which is not possible for you.'

"But this was what the things said to him. Another voice inside him was saying that one must not submit to the past and one can make what one likes of oneself. And obeying this voice, he went..."