Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy…
Quote
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Original text
Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему.
The story behind this quote
The sentence opens Anna Karenina, and the second sentence brings us at once to a particular unhappy family: “Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys’ house.” The wife, Dolly, has discovered that her husband, Stiva, is carrying on with the French governess and has declared that she cannot go on living in the same house with him. This has lasted three days, and the whole household is in disorder. Stiva is Anna’s brother, and it is to reconcile the couple that Anna will come to Moscow, and meet Vronsky.
Tolstoy published the novel in instalments between 1875 and 1877; it appeared in Constance Garnett’s English translation, the source of this wording, in 1901.
The opening is one of the most famous first sentences in literature. It has even given its name to the “Anna Karenina principle”, used by Jared Diamond and others: success requires that every one of many conditions be met, while failure needs only one of them to go wrong, so failures are all different.
The source
Anna Karenina, opening sentence (translation by Constance Garnett), 1877
Original text checked word for word in the work; the translation is by quotesay.
Author
Leo Tolstoy
A count and landowner, Leo Tolstoy wrote at his estate of Yasnaya Polyana the two novels that made him one of the greatest writers of all time: War and Peace (1865–1869) and Anna Karenina (1875–1877). A spiritual crisis then led him to preach non-violence, poverty…
Quotes by Leo Tolstoy