Glad to be able to put it behind me. Not sure I really enjoyed it, but I'm proud to say I made it through. It was an easier read than I expected, but I had a really hard time sympathizing with the characters enough to care about their innermost thoughts, which Tolstoy would go on and on and on about. I understand how the socio-political circumstances lent themselves to Anna's predicament, but I could have done without the in-depth back and forth between many of the characters regarding the politics of the time. ( )

One of the greatest books on the hazards of adultery ever written, but as the excerpts below illustrate, far more than that. I sometimes think of "Anna Karenina" as the yin and "War and Peace" the yang in Tolstoy's universe; they are complementary master works that I highly recommend.

Quotes...
On birth:
"Falling on his knees by her bedside he held his wife’s hand to his lips, kissing it, and that hand, by a feeble movement of the fingers, replied to the kisses. And meanwhile at the foot of the bed, like the flame of a lamp, flickered in Mary Vlasevna’s skillful hands the life of a human being who had never before existed: a human being who, with the same right and the same importance to himself, would live and would procreate others like himself.
“Alive! Alive! And a boy! Don’t be anxious,” Levin heard Mary Vlasevna say, as she slapped the baby’s back with a shaking hand.
“Mama, is it true?” asked Kitty.
The Princess could only sob in reply.
And amid the silence, as a positive answer to the mother’s question, a voice quite unlike all the restrained voices that had been speaking in the room made itself heard. It was a bold, clamorous voice that had no consideration for anything, it was the cry of the human being who had so incomprehensibly appeared from some unknown realm."

On philosophy and enlightenment:
"“And don’t all the philosophic theories do the same, when by ways of thought strange and unnatural to man they lead him to a knowledge of what he knew long ago, and knows so surely that without it he could not live? Is it not evident in the development of every philosopher’s theory that he knows in advance, as indubitably as the peasant Theodore and not a whit more clearly than he, the chief meaning of life, and only wishes, by a questionable intellectual process, to return to what everyone knows?'"

On joy in the small moments in life; I love this passage:
"And what he then saw he never saw again. Two children going to school, some pigeons that flew down from the roof, and a few loaves put outside a baker’s window by an invisible hand touched him particularly. These loaves, the pigeons, and the two boys seemed creatures not of this earth. It all happened at the same time; one of the boys ran after a pigeon and looked smilingly up at Levin; the pigeon flapped its wings and fluttered up, glittering in the sunshine amid the snow-dust that trembled in the air; from the window came the scent of fresh-baked bread and the loaves were put out. All these things were so unusually beautiful that Levin laughed and cried with joy."

On Love:
"Kitty felt a particular charm in being able now to talk with her mother as an equal about those chief events in a woman’s life.
“Of course he loved me; he used to visit us in the country.”
“But how was it decided, Mama?”
“I suppose you think you discovered something new? It was just the same – it decided by the eyes, by smiles…'"

...and love diminished over time:
"“…I was married in the evening too,” answered Mrs. Korsunskaya, and sighed as she remembered how sweet she had looked that day, how absurdly enamored her husband was then, and how different things were now."

"Dolly, who was standing near, heard, but did not reply. Her eyes were moist and she could not have spoken without bursting into tears. She rejoiced at the sight of Kitty and Levin, but going back to the past she thought of her own wedding, kept glancing at the beaming Oblonsky, and, forgetting the present, remembered nothing but her own young and innocent love. She remembered not herself only, but all the women with whom she was intimate or acquainted; thought of them as they had been at that most solemn moment of their lives, when, like Kitty, they had stood beneath the nuptial crown with love, hope and fear in their hearts, renouncing the past and entering upon the mystic future. Among the brides that came to her mind was her dear Anna, about whose impending divorce she had recently heard. She too had once stood with veiled head, pure and crowned with orange blossom. “And now? How strange!” she murmured."

... and love of fellow man:
"'…Was it by reason that I attained to the knowledge that I must love my neighbor and not throttle him? They told me so when I was a child, and I gladly believed it, because they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason! Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.'"

On the meaninglessness of life:
"'Well, what of that? I never stop thinking of death,” said Levin. “It really is time for me to die. All those things are mere nonsense. I will tell you frankly: I value my idea and my work immensely, but really…Just think! This whole world of ours is only a speck of mildew sprung up on a tiny planet; yet we think we can have something great – thoughts, actions! They are all but grains of sand!'"

""Without knowing what I am, and why I am here, it is impossible to live. Yet I cannot know that, and therefore I can’t live,” he said to himself.
“In an infinity of time, matter, and space, a bubble organism separates itself, maintains itself awhile, and then bursts, and that bubble is – I!” …
And though he was a happy and healthy family man, Levin was several times so near to suicide that he hid a cord he had lest he should hang himself, and he feared to carry a gun lest he should shoot himself.
But he did not hang or shoot himself and went on living."

On the beauty of nature:
"Koznyshev was all the while filled with admiration for the beauty of the thickly-leaved forest, and kept pointing out to his brother the old lime trees, looking so dark on the shady side, covered with creamy buds all ready to burst into blossom; of the new shoots, sparkling like emeralds, on the trees. Constantine Levin did not like talking or hearing about the beauty of nature. Words seemed to detract from the beauty of what he was looking at."

On fathers and sons:
"His father always talked to him, Serezha felt, as if he were some imaginary boy out of a book, quite unlike Serezha; and with his father he always tried to pretend to be that boy out of a book."

On solitude:
"Having lost his interlocutor Levin continued the conversation with the landowner, trying to prove to him that all our difficulties arise from the fact that we do not wish to understand the characteristics and habits of our laborers; but the landowner, like everybody who thinks individually and in solitude, was obtuse to other thoughts and tenacious of his own."

On the "younger generation":
"“…What papa says is perfectly true; when we were brought up they went to one extreme, and kept us children in the attics while our parents lived on the first floor; but now it’s just the reverse – the lumber room for the parents and the first floor for the children! Nowadays parents are hardly allowed to live, and everything is for the children.”"

I love Norton Critical Editions; in this particular one Dostoevsky's, "The Russian View of Human Guilt and Crime" was included, an excerpt of which is:

"It is clear and intelligible to the point of obviousness that evil in mankind is concealed deeper than the physician-socialists suppose; that in no organization of society can evil be eliminated; that the human soul will remain identical; that abnormality and sin emanate from the soul itself, and finally, that the law of the human spirit are so unknown to science, so obscure, so indeterminate and mysterious, that, as yet, there can neither be physician nor final judges, but that there is only He who saith: “Vengeance belongeth unto me; I will recompense.” He alone knows the whole mystery of the world and man’s ultimate destiny. And man, as yet, with the pride of infallibility, should not venture to solve anything – the times and the seasons have not yet come." ( )

The book was interesting and it shows suffer of woman who faced the high society and her husband and also the story showed a fight of the main character between her love and her family the part that I liked in the story is when Kitty have her happiness.
Mooza.E ( )

It took me ages to get around to reading it. I would read that line everyone has read, and start reading something else. Or I would read the first chapter and then give up. Once, bravely, I read most of the parts about Anna, Levin and his boring life I could not stand.
Then I got engaged. I had never known a happily- truely happily- married couple. I was depressed, and in the mood where Anna's rebellion against conformity was comforting, and Levin's romance enchanting.
And I loved it. There is a reason it is called the greatest novel ever, there is nothing like this, imagined in this detail, this much a part of my life, half a continent and an entire century away.

I never did finish this and there's a reason why. ( )