Quotes from Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy ·  964 pages

Rating: (508.7K votes)


“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“I think... if it is true that
there are as many minds as there
are heads, then there are as many
kinds of love as there are hearts.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“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.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina



“Spring is the time of plans and projects.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed. ”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand."

- Anna Karenina {Anna Karenina}”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina



“I've always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“Anything is better than lies and deceit!”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be. -Dolly”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina



“All the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class included all the girls in the world except her, and they had all the usual human feelings and were very ordinary girls; while the other class -herself alone- had no weaknesses and was superior to all humanity.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“They've got no idea what happiness is, they don't know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us--there is no life.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“But I'm glad you'll see me as I am. Above all, I wouldn't want people to think that I want to prove anything. I don't want to prove anything, I just want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself. I have that right, haven't I?”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina



“It's hard to love a woman and do anything.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. This fulfillment showed him the eternal error men make in imagining that their happiness depends on the realization of their desires.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina



“Something magical has happened to me: like a dream when one feels frightened and creepy, and suddenly wakes up to the knowledge that no such terrors exist. I have wakened up.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget...”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it."

- Vronksy {Anna Karenina}”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


“I'm like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he's cold, and his clothes are torn, and he's ashamed, but he's not unhappy.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Anna Karenina


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About the author

Leo Tolstoy
Born place: in Yasnaya Polyana, Tula, Russian Empire
Born date September 9, 1828
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