War and Peace, the magnum opus of Russian author Leo Tolstoy, is often described as one of the greatest novels ever written. With its sweeping narrative, intricate character studies, and profound philosophical reflections, it's a literary treasure trove filled with insights into human nature, society, and the tumultuous times in which it is set.
One of the things that make War and Peace enduring for me is its memorable and thought-provoking quotes. These quotes offer a glimpse into the novel's themes, characters, and the enduring wisdom that will resonate with me for a very long time.
QUOTES FROM WAR AND PEACE
"We all think we only have to be knocked a little bit off course and we've lost everything, but it's only the start of something new and good. Where there is life, there is happiness. There is a huge amount yet to come. "
“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”
“Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy.”
“Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid.”
“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”
" For the first time in his life Pierre was struck by the endless variety of men's minds, which guarantees that no truth is ever seen the same way by any two persons."
"He was agonized by an inner turmoil beyond any resolution. He was scared of his own reflections, but he couldn't get away from them."
"You have to try and make your life as enjoyable as you can. Here I am alive, and its not my fault, so I have to try and get by as best I can without hurting anybody until death takes over."
“Yes, love, ...but not the love that loves for something, to gain something, or because of something, but that love that I felt for the first time, when dying, I saw my enemy and yet loved him. I knew that feeling of love which is the essence of the soul, for which no object is needed. And I know that blissful feeling now too. To love one's neighbours; to love one's enemies. To love everything - to Love God in all His manifestations. Someone dear to one can be loved with human love; but an enemy can only be loved with divine love. And that was why I felt such joy when I felt that I loved that man. What happened to him? Is he alive? ...Loving with human love, one may pass from love to hatred; but divine love cannot change. Nothing, not even death, can shatter it. It is the very nature of the soul."
“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.”
“The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness...”
"The only thing we can know is that we don't know anything. And that is the summit of human wisdom."
"Love gets in the way of death. Love is life. Every single thing I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is-everything exists-only because I love. Everything is bound up with love, and love alone. Love is God, and dying means me, a tiny particle of love, going back to its universal and eternal source."
"Why do I go on struggling? Why do I keep on toiling at this narrow, cramped drudgery, when life opens up before me, the whole of life, with all its joys?"
"How easy it is, what little effort it takes to do so much good, thought Pierre, 'and how little we trouble ourselves to do it!'"
"A spiritual wound, one that comes from a laceration of the spirit, is much like a physical wound; after it has healed and knitted together on the outside, strange as it may seem, a spiritual wound behaves much like a physical injury in continuing the healing process on the inside under pressure from the life force pushing up within."
“For if we allow that human life is always guided by reason, we destroy the premise that life is possible at all.”
"He's different, sort of clean and smooth and fresh. It's as if he's just come out of the bathhouse. Do you know what I mean? A moral bathhouse."
"It was now that Pierre understood the full power of human vitality, and the effectiveness of our inbuilt safety device, distraction, which works like a safety-valve in steam-engines, letting off excess steam as soon as the pressure reaches a certain point."
"If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war."
"How can one be well...when one suffers morally?"
"Even in the very warmest, friendliest and simplest of relationships you need either flattery or praise in the way that you need grease to keep wheels turning."
"They wept for their friendship, their kind-heartedness and the unfortunate need for lifelong friends to soil their hands with anything as sordid as money, and they wept also for their lost youth....But the tears of both women were sweet..."
"My dear and excellent friend,
What a terrible and awful thing absence is! I tell myself that half of my existence and happiness is in you, that for all the distance that divides us, our hearts are united by indissoluble bonds, yet my own rebels against destiny, and in spite of the pleasures and distractions that surround me, I cannot overcome a certain secret sadness which I have sensed at the bottom of my heart ever since our separation."
"He always seemed to me to have an excellent heart, and this is the quality I value most in people."
"It seemed as if humanity had forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, who preached love and forgiveness, and were placing the greatest merit in the art of killing one another."
"We must try to put ourselves in other people's places. When you understand everything you can forgive everything."
"Worst of all, he knew that his despair was all in his own fault-his weakness had caused all this misery."
"Being young doesn't stop you being brave."
"It was clear that what she was saying now she had gone through before in tears."
"He had declined steeply in society's esteem, especially since he had neither the wit nor the will to curry public favour."
"Living your life with the sole object of avoiding evil just so you won't regret anything afterwards-it's not enough. I used to live like that, I used to live for myself, and I ruined my life. And it's only now, when I'm living-or trying to live for other people, it's only now that I've come to know any happiness in life."
"...and suddenly something inside him that had long laid dormant, something better than before, awoke in his soul with a feeling of youth and joy."
"We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them."
"And suddenly the flaming glow from some inner fire that had been doused until then was newly ablaze in her. She was utterly transformed."
"A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it."
"It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else's mistakes."
"A good player who loses at chess is genuinely convinced hat he has lost because of a mistake, and he looks for this mistake in the beginning of his game, but forgets that there were also mistakes at every step in the course of the game, that none of his moves was perfect. The mistake he pays attention to is conspicuous only because his opponent took advantage of it."
“A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, 'Today I'm going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.”
“It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.”
“Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.”
“What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of wills transferred to one person. On what condition are the wills of the masses transferred to one person? On condition that the person express the will of the whole people. That is, power is power. That is, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.”
"Happiness beyond materialism, beyond all external, material influences, happiness known only to the soul, the happiness of loving!"
"Those eyes, brimming with happy tears, were gazing at him with gentle compassion and the joy of love."
"Got to be nice to each other. We're all mortal, aren't we?"
"She knew she was in love for the first and last time in her life, she could sense she was loved in return, and this gave her a settled form of happiness."
"She seemed to be fonder of the family as a whole than the people in it. Like a cat, she had attached herself to the house rather than the people."
"What is power? power is the collective will of the masses transferred to a single person. On what terms is the will of the masses transferred to a single person? On condition that he expresses the will of the whole people. In other words, power is power. Which is to say that power is a word with a meaning we cannot understand."
"All knowledge is simply the essence of life subsumed by the laws of reason."
"In the biological sciences, what we know, we call the laws of necessity; what we don't know, we call it the life force. The life force is simply an expression for an unexplainable leftover from what we know about the essence of life. It is the same with history: what we know, we call the laws of necessity; what we don't know, we call free will. In the eyes of of history free will is simply an expression for an unexplainable leftover from what we know about the laws of human life."
“In captivity, in the shed, Pierre had learned, not with his mind, but with his whole being, his life, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfying of natural human needs, and that all unhappiness comes not from lack, but from superfluity; but now, in these last three weeks of the march, he had learned a new and more comforting truth - he had learned that there is nothing frightening in the world. He had learned that, as there is no situation in the world in which a man can be happy and perfectly free, so there is no situation in which he can be perfectly unhappy and unfree. He had learned that there is a limit to suffering and a limit to freedom, and that those limits are very close; that the man who suffers because one leaf is askew in his bed of roses, suffers as much as he now suffered falling asleep on the bare, damp ground, one side getting cold as the other warmed up; that when he used to put on his tight ballroom shoes, he suffered just as much as now, when he walked quite barefoot (his shoes had long since worn out) and his feet were covered with sores.”
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