Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina

by

Leo Tolstoy

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Levin, the other main protagonist of the novel (besides Anna), is a landowner who is primarily concerned with farming, agricultural, and rural life. He is socially awkward: he feels much more at home working on his farm or being outdoors than in the complex political affairs and dramas of city life. Unlike his brothers, Levin is not a natural intellectual and debater; rather than arguing indoors, he feels more instinctively at home working outside. Levin is frequently anxious and constantly arguing, since he wants to think everything through. He doesn’t want to westernize Russian society, as many aristocrats do, simply for the sake of elegance; however, he also doesn’t want to cling blindly to old ways in regards to farming, but instead promotes efficiency and agricultural reforms. Levin falls in love with Kitty, and though his proposal fails the first time, causing him great embarrassment and self-loathing, eventually they consummate their relationship in what ultimately turns out to be the happiest marriage of the three main marriages in the novel. Levin spends a great deal of time writing and thinking about large questions of agriculture and humanity, but he ultimately concludes that everyone must concern themselves with taking care of their own individual affairs rather than becoming sucked into huge existential crises. Levin is also deeply atheistic throughout almost the entire novel, but at the end, he undergoes a religious epiphany after an encounter with a peasant. Levin’s transformation from an atheist to a believer mirrors Tolstoy’s own transformation. Levin is perhaps the closest character to Tolstoy himself in the novel, who believed fervently in working on the land and connecting to one’s own individual labor rather than striving to achieve recognition in hypocritical city society.

Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin Quotes in Anna Karenina

The Anna Karenina quotes below are all either spoken by Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin or refer to Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Marriage and Family Life Theme Icon
).
Part 2, Chapter 12 Quotes

The old grass and the sprouting needles of new grass greened, the buds on the guelder-rose, the currants and the sticky, spirituous birches swelled, and on the willow, all sprinkled with golden catkins, the flitting, newly hatched bee buzzed.

Related Characters: Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin (speaker)
Related Symbols: Natural World
Page Number: 153
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3, Chapter 4 Quotes

He thought of nothing, desired nothing, except not to lag behind and to do the best job be could. He heard only the clang of scythes and ahead of him saw Titus’s erect figure moving on, the curved semicircle of this mowed space, grass and flower-heads bending down slowly and wavily about the blade of his scythe, and ahead of him the end of the swath, where rest would come.

Related Characters: Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin
Related Symbols: Natural World
Page Number: 250
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4, Chapter 13 Quotes

“Here,” he said, and wrote the initial letters: w, y, a, m: t, c, b, d, i, m, n, o, t? These letters meant: “When you answered me: ‘that cannot be,’ did it mean never or then?” ... She wrote, t, I, c, g, n, o, a ... And he wrote three letters. But she was reading after his hand, and before he finished writing, she finished it herself and wrote the answer: “Yes.”

Related Characters: Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin (speaker), Princess Katerina (Kitty) Alexandrovna Shcherbatsky (speaker)
Related Symbols: Written Language, Foreign Language, and Communication
Page Number: 397-398
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4, Chapter 15 Quotes

All that night and morning Levin had lived completely unconsciously and had felt himself completely removed from the conditions of material life. He had not eaten for a whole day, had not slept for two nights, had spent several hours undressed in the freezing cold, yet felt not only fresh and healthy as never before but completely independent of his body.

Related Characters: Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin
Related Symbols: Natural World
Page Number: 402
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 5, Chapter 6 Quotes

Often and much as they had both heard about the belief that whoever is first to step on the rug will be the head in the family, neither Levin nor Kitty could recall it as they made those few steps. Nor did they hear the loud remarks and disputes that, in the observation of some, he had been the first, or, in the opinions of others, they had steps on it together.

Related Characters: Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin, Princess Katerina (Kitty) Alexandrovna Shcherbatsky
Page Number: 457
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 5, Chapter 20 Quotes

The sight of his brother and the proximity of death renewed in Levin’s soul that feeling of horror at the inscrutability and, with that, the nearness and inevitability of death, which had seized him on that autumn evening when his brother had come for a visit. The feeling was now stronger than before; he felt even less capable than before of understanding the meaning of death, and its inevitability appeared still more horrible to him; but now, thanks to his wife’s nearness, the feeling did not drive him to despair: in spite of death, he felt the necessity to live and to love. He felt that love saved him from despair and that under the threat of despair this love was becoming still stronger and purer.

Related Characters: Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin, Princess Katerina (Kitty) Alexandrovna Shcherbatsky, Nikolai Dmitrich Levin
Related Symbols: Natural World
Page Number: 504
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 6, Chapter 10 Quotes

But it was an unlucky day; he missed, and when he went to look for the one he had shot, he could not find it either. He searched everywhere in the sedge, but Laska did not believe he had shot it, and when he sent her to search, she did not really search but only pretended.

Related Characters: Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin, Laska
Related Symbols: Natural World
Page Number: 584
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 7, Chapter 14 Quotes

He knew and felt only that what was being accomplished was similar to what had been accomplished a year ago in a hotel in a provincial capital, on the deathbed of his brother Nikolai. But that had been grief and this was joy. But that grief and this joy were equally outside all ordinary circumstances of life, were like holes in this ordinary life, through which something higher showed. And just as painful, as tormenting in its coming, was what was now accomplished; and just as inconceivably, in contemplating this higher thing, the soul rose to such heights as it had never known before, where reason was no longer able to overtake it.

Related Characters: Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin (speaker), Princess Katerina (Kitty) Alexandrovna Shcherbatsky, Nikolai Dmitrich Levin
Related Symbols: Natural World, Dreams and Spiritualism
Page Number: 713
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 8, Chapter 19 Quotes

“I’ll get angry in the same way with the coachman Ivan, argue in the same way, speak my mind inappropriately, there will be the same wall between my soul’s holy of holies and other people, even my wife, I’ll accuse her in the same way of my own fear and then regret it, I’ll fail in the same way to understand with my reason why I pray, and yet I will pray – but my life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which is in my power to put into it!”

Related Characters: Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin (speaker), Princess Katerina (Kitty) Alexandrovna Shcherbatsky
Page Number: 817
Explanation and Analysis:
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Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin Quotes in Anna Karenina

The Anna Karenina quotes below are all either spoken by Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin or refer to Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Marriage and Family Life Theme Icon
).
Part 2, Chapter 12 Quotes

The old grass and the sprouting needles of new grass greened, the buds on the guelder-rose, the currants and the sticky, spirituous birches swelled, and on the willow, all sprinkled with golden catkins, the flitting, newly hatched bee buzzed.

Related Characters: Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin (speaker)
Related Symbols: Natural World
Page Number: 153
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3, Chapter 4 Quotes

He thought of nothing, desired nothing, except not to lag behind and to do the best job be could. He heard only the clang of scythes and ahead of him saw Titus’s erect figure moving on, the curved semicircle of this mowed space, grass and flower-heads bending down slowly and wavily about the blade of his scythe, and ahead of him the end of the swath, where rest would come.

Related Characters: Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin
Related Symbols: Natural World
Page Number: 250
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4, Chapter 13 Quotes

“Here,” he said, and wrote the initial letters: w, y, a, m: t, c, b, d, i, m, n, o, t? These letters meant: “When you answered me: ‘that cannot be,’ did it mean never or then?” ... She wrote, t, I, c, g, n, o, a ... And he wrote three letters. But she was reading after his hand, and before he finished writing, she finished it herself and wrote the answer: “Yes.”

Related Characters: Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin (speaker), Princess Katerina (Kitty) Alexandrovna Shcherbatsky (speaker)
Related Symbols: Written Language, Foreign Language, and Communication
Page Number: 397-398
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4, Chapter 15 Quotes

All that night and morning Levin had lived completely unconsciously and had felt himself completely removed from the conditions of material life. He had not eaten for a whole day, had not slept for two nights, had spent several hours undressed in the freezing cold, yet felt not only fresh and healthy as never before but completely independent of his body.

Related Characters: Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin
Related Symbols: Natural World
Page Number: 402
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 5, Chapter 6 Quotes

Often and much as they had both heard about the belief that whoever is first to step on the rug will be the head in the family, neither Levin nor Kitty could recall it as they made those few steps. Nor did they hear the loud remarks and disputes that, in the observation of some, he had been the first, or, in the opinions of others, they had steps on it together.

Related Characters: Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin, Princess Katerina (Kitty) Alexandrovna Shcherbatsky
Page Number: 457
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 5, Chapter 20 Quotes

The sight of his brother and the proximity of death renewed in Levin’s soul that feeling of horror at the inscrutability and, with that, the nearness and inevitability of death, which had seized him on that autumn evening when his brother had come for a visit. The feeling was now stronger than before; he felt even less capable than before of understanding the meaning of death, and its inevitability appeared still more horrible to him; but now, thanks to his wife’s nearness, the feeling did not drive him to despair: in spite of death, he felt the necessity to live and to love. He felt that love saved him from despair and that under the threat of despair this love was becoming still stronger and purer.

Related Characters: Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin, Princess Katerina (Kitty) Alexandrovna Shcherbatsky, Nikolai Dmitrich Levin
Related Symbols: Natural World
Page Number: 504
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 6, Chapter 10 Quotes

But it was an unlucky day; he missed, and when he went to look for the one he had shot, he could not find it either. He searched everywhere in the sedge, but Laska did not believe he had shot it, and when he sent her to search, she did not really search but only pretended.

Related Characters: Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin, Laska
Related Symbols: Natural World
Page Number: 584
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 7, Chapter 14 Quotes

He knew and felt only that what was being accomplished was similar to what had been accomplished a year ago in a hotel in a provincial capital, on the deathbed of his brother Nikolai. But that had been grief and this was joy. But that grief and this joy were equally outside all ordinary circumstances of life, were like holes in this ordinary life, through which something higher showed. And just as painful, as tormenting in its coming, was what was now accomplished; and just as inconceivably, in contemplating this higher thing, the soul rose to such heights as it had never known before, where reason was no longer able to overtake it.

Related Characters: Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin (speaker), Princess Katerina (Kitty) Alexandrovna Shcherbatsky, Nikolai Dmitrich Levin
Related Symbols: Natural World, Dreams and Spiritualism
Page Number: 713
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 8, Chapter 19 Quotes

“I’ll get angry in the same way with the coachman Ivan, argue in the same way, speak my mind inappropriately, there will be the same wall between my soul’s holy of holies and other people, even my wife, I’ll accuse her in the same way of my own fear and then regret it, I’ll fail in the same way to understand with my reason why I pray, and yet I will pray – but my life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which is in my power to put into it!”

Related Characters: Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin (speaker), Princess Katerina (Kitty) Alexandrovna Shcherbatsky
Page Number: 817
Explanation and Analysis: