Quotes from Anna Karenina

Quotations follow the Rosamund Bartlett translation (Oxford World's Classics, 2014) — our recommended edition.

1. 2

   Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

2. 3

   Vengeance is mine; I will repay.

3. 4

   And the light by which she had read the book filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and evil, flared up more brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that had been in darkness, flickered, began to grow dim, and was quenched forever.

4. 5

   He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.

5. 6

   He walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking.

6. 7

   Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.

7. 8

   All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.

8. 9

   If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.

9. 10

   If you look for perfection, you will never be satisfied.

10. 11

    She was fascinating in her simple black dress, fascinating were her round arms with their bracelets, fascinating was her firm neck with its thread of pearls, fascinating the straying curls of her loose hair, fascinating the graceful light movements of her little feet and hands, fascinating was that lovely face in its eagerness, but there was something terrible and cruel in her fascination.

11. 12

    It showed him the mistake men make in picturing to themselves happiness as the realization of their desires.

12. 13

    He soon felt that the realization of his desires gave him no more than a grain of sand out of the mountain of happiness he had expected.

13. 14

    When you told me it could never be, did that mean never, or then?

14. 15

    Spring is the time of plans and projects.

15. 16

    But my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.