All happy families resemble one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

This line is the famous opening sentence of Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina, first published in serial form in the Russian journal The Russian Messenger (Russkiy Vestnik) in 1875–1877 and then as a book. Tolstoy begins not with his adulterous heroine but with the domestic crisis of the Oblonsky household, where Stepan Oblonsky’s infidelity has thrown family life into disorder. The aphoristic opening frames the novel’s central preoccupation with marriage, kinship, and the social and moral pressures bearing on private life in late-imperial Russia, setting a comparative lens through which multiple households (Oblonskys, Karenins, Levins) will be judged.

Tolstoy proposes a paradox: happiness in family life tends to require a similar set of conditions—mutual trust, stability, shared values, and social functioning—so it appears uniform, while unhappiness can arise from countless distinct failures (betrayal, incompatibility, poverty, illness, pride, social constraint), making each unhappy household feel singular. The sentence also signals the novel’s method: it will anatomize different kinds of marital and familial breakdown rather than treat “unhappiness” as one generic state. As an opening, it invites readers to see private suffering as both deeply individual and structurally patterned, shaped by moral choices and by the institutions of marriage and society.

1) “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
2) “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
3) “All happy families are more or less alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”