Anna Karenina Quotes - Page 2 | Just Great DataBase

There it is!' he thought with rapture. 'When I was already in despair, and when it seemed there would be no end- there it is! She loves me. She's confessed it.

The pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in searching for it.

I don't allow myself to doubt myself even for a moment.

If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect.

In all human sorrow nothing gives comfort but love and faith, and that in the sight of Christ's compassion for us no sorrow is trifling.

Ah, if everyone was as sensitive as you! There's no girl who hasn't gone through that. And it's all so unimportant!

Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallpox.

I don't want to prove anything; I merely want to live, to do no one harm but myself. I have the right to do that, haven't I?

There was no answer, except the general answer life gives to all the most complex and insoluble questions. That answer is: one must live for the needs of the day, in other words, become oblivious.

But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.

But that's the whole aim of civilization: to make everything a source of enjoyment.

The only happy marriages I know are arranged ones.

I am not strange but I feel queer. I am like that sometimes. I feel like crying all the time. It is very silly but it will pass.

These joys were so trifling as to be as imperceptible as grains of gold among the sand, and in moments of depression she saw nothing but the sand; yet there were brighter moments when she felt nothing but joy, saw nothing but the gold.

He knew she was there by the joy and terror that took possession of his heart [...] Everything was lit up by her. She was the smile that brightened everything around.

I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do. But if even that cannot be, command me to disappear, and I disappear. You shall not see me if my presence is distasteful to you.

We are all created to be miserable, and that we all know it, and all invent means of deceiving each other. And when one sees the truth, what is one to do?

When Levin thought what he was and what he was living for, he could find no answer to the questions and was reduced to despair; but when he left off questioning himself about it, it seemed as though he knew both what he was and what he was living for, acting and living resolutely and without hesitation.

I think that to find out what love is really like, one must first make a mistake and then put it right.

It's like scarlet fever: one has to get it over.""Then one should invent a way of inoculating love, like vaccination.

There was no solution, save that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insolvable: One must live in the needs of the day--that is, forget oneself.

Without the support from religion--remember, we talked about it--no father, using only his own resources, would be able to bring up a child.

They ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox.

Everything was made bright by her. She was the smile that shed light all around her.

It's not so much that he can't fall in love, but he has not the weakness necessary.

The Lord had given them the day and the Lord had given them the strength. And the day and the strength had been dedicated to labor, and the labor was its reward. Who was the labor for? What would be its fruits? These were irrelevant and idle questions.

Without knowledge of what I am and why I am here, it is impossible to live, and since I cannot know that, I cannot live either. In an infinity of time, in an infinity of matter, and an infinity of space a bubble-organism emerges while will exist for a little time and then burst, and that bubble am I.

With friends, one is well; but at home, one is better.

Yes, there is something uncanny, demonic and fascinating in her.

Then he thought himself unhappy, but happiness was all in the future; now he felt that the best happiness was already in the past.

I think that in order to know love one must make a mistake and then correct it.

Perhaps it's because I appreciate all I have so much that I don't worry about what I haven't got.

At that instant he knew that all his doubts, even the impossibility of believing with his reason, of which he was aware in himself, did not in the least hinder his turning to God. All of that now floated out of his soul like dust. To whom was he to turn if not to Him in whose hands he felt himself, his soul, and his love?

Here I am...wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end--that there is such a thing as death.

I have discovered nothing. I have only found out what I knew. I understand the force that in the past gave me life, and now too gives me life. I have been set free from falsity, I have found the Master.

There are people who, on meeting a successful rival, no matter in what, are at once disposed to turn their backs on everything good in him, and to see only what is bad. There are people, on the other hand, who desire above all to find in that lucky rival the qualities by which he has outstripped them, and seek with a throbbing ache at heart only what is good.

Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it.

She was in that highly-wrought state when the reasoning powers act with great rapidity: the state a man is in before a battle or a struggle, in danger, and at the decisive moments of life - those moments when a man shows once and for all what he is worth, that his past was not lived in vain but was a preparation for these moments.

My life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!

What's all this love of arguing? No one ever convinces anyone else.

Why am I going?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. "You know that I am going in order to be where you are," said he. "I cannot do otherwise.""Not a word, not a movement of yours will I ever forget, nor can I...

A man can spend several hours sitting cross-legged in the same position if he knows that noting prevents him from changing it; but if he knows that he has to sit with his legs crossed like that, he will get cramps, his legs will twitch and strain towards where he would like to stretch them.

Anna smiled,as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love. . .

Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart, as though it were a fresh wound he had only just received. But he was at home, and at home the very walls are a support.

You've said nothing, of course, and I ask nothing," he was saying; "but you know that friendship's not what I want: that there's only one happiness in life for me, that word that you dislike so…yes, love!…

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.

In Varenka, she realized that one has but to forget oneself and love others, and one will be calm, happy, and noble.

Respect is an invention of people who want to cover up the empty place where love should be.

And the candle by the light of which she had been reading that book filled with anxieties, deceptions, grief and evil, flared up brighter than ever, lit up for her all that had once been darkness, sputtered, grew dim and went out for ever.

The question of how things will settle down is the only important question...