— Anna Karenina (1878), Part 7, Chapter 4
About this quote
हिन्दी में
अगर तुम पूर्णता ढूँढ़ते रहोगे, तो कभी संतुष्ट नहीं हो पाओगे।
What it means
The sentence is a diagnosis, not advice. It locates the problem in the standard rather than in anything the standard is applied to: perfection is defined so that no actual thing can meet it, so dissatisfaction is guaranteed in advance by the looking, not produced later by the finding.
It is usually quoted as a case against high standards — settle, good enough is good enough. The line does not say that. It says nothing about whether you should aim high; it says that satisfaction is not available on those terms, and leaves you to decide whether you want satisfaction. Tolstoy of all people is not recommending mediocrity.
What it teaches you
Next time a result disappoints you, run one test before revising the work: describe, in advance and in specifics, what version of it would have satisfied you. If you cannot produce that description — or if every version you imagine has an objection waiting — the dissatisfaction was never about this piece of work, and improving it will not end it.
अर्थ और सीख
यह पंक्ति सलाह नहीं, एक पहचान है: पूर्णता की माँग ऐसी होती है कि कोई भी वास्तविक चीज़ उस पर खरी नहीं उतर सकती, इसलिए असंतोष पहले से तय है। इसे अक्सर कम में संतोष कर लो के अर्थ में उद्धृत किया जाता है, जबकि यह ऊँचे मानकों के ख़िलाफ़ कुछ नहीं कहती। सीख यह है कि निराश होने पर पहले यह तय करें कि कौन-सा नतीजा आपको संतुष्ट करता — अगर ऐसा कोई नतीजा बता ही न सकें, तो दिक़्क़त काम में नहीं, माँग में है।
Where it comes from
Spoken in conversation about raising children, and one of the quieter lines in a novel full of loud ones. Different English translations render it differently — ‘you will never be satisfied’ here, ‘you’ll never be content’ elsewhere — which is worth knowing before quoting it as fixed wording.
The speaker is describing parenting, but Tolstoy places it in a book where perfectionism about love destroys at least one life.
