In honor of finishing Anna Karenina (after starting it five months & two continents ago) and being in Yalta where Leo Tolstoy spent many summers, I give you my favorite quotes from the novel:
Happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (this is obviously a quality first-line)
But women, my boy, they’re the pivot everything turns upon. – Stepan Arkadyevitch
You want a man’s work, too, always to have a defined aim, and love and family life always to be undivided—and that’s not how it is. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow. –Stepan Arkadyevitch
You are one of those delightful women in whose company it’s sweet to be silent as well as to talk. – Countess Vronskaya
With friends, one is well; but at home, one is better. – Levin
One has but to forget oneself and love others, and one will be calm, happy, and noble. – Kitty
God gave the day, God gave the strength. And the day and the strength were consecrated to labor, and the labor was its own reward. For whom he labor? What would be its fruits? These were idle considerations – beside the point. – Levin
But the more intensely he thought, the clearer it became to him that it was indubitably so, that in reality, looking upon life, he had forgotten one little fact—that death will come, and all ends; that nothing was even worth beginning, and that there was no helping it anyway. Yes, it was awful, but it was so. – Levin
By gymnastics and careful attention to his health he had brought himself to such a point that in spite of his excess in pleasure he looked as fresh as a big glossy green Dutch cucumber. – Levin
But perhaps it is always so, that men form their conceptions from fictitious, conventional types, and then—all the combinaisons made—they are tired of the fictitious figures and begin to invent more natural, true figures. –Anna
To whom was he to turn if not to Him in whose hands he felt himself, his soul, and his love? -Levin (as his child is born)
We all want what is sweet and nice. If not sweetmeats, then a dirty ice. –Anna
Aren’t we all flung into the world only to hate each other, and so to torture ourselves and each other? – Anna
Reason discovered the struggle for existence, and the law that requires us to oppress all who hinder the satisfaction of our desires. That is the deduction of reason. But loving one’s neighbor reason could never discover, because it’s irrational. – Levin
Well, then, leave us with our passions and thoughts, without any idea of the one God, of the Creator, or without any idea of what is right, without any idea of moral evil. Just try and build up anything without those ideas! – Levin
Yes, what I know, I know not by reason, but it has been given to me, revealed to me, and I know it with my heart, by faith in the chief thing taught by the church. – Levin
Do I not know that that is infinite space, and that it is not a round arch? But, however, I screw up my eyes and strain my sight, I cannot see it not round and not bounded, and in spite of my knowing about infinite space, I am incontestably right when I see a solid blue dome, and more right than when I strain my eyes to see beyond it. – Levin (on the sky)
I think part of my literary soul has fallen a bit in love with this ridiculously long Russian novel.
