War and Peace Study Guide

War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869)

• The only thing that we know is that we know nothing— and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.
  • Ch. I

• "What's this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way under me," he thought, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle of the French soldiers with the artilleryman was ending, and eager to know whether the red-haired gunner artilleryman was killed or not, whether the cannons had been taken or saved. But he saw nothing of all that. Above him there was nothing but the sky— the lofty sky, not clear, but still immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds creeping quietly over it.
  • Bk. III, ch. 16

• Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrei went up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the farewell kiss. And there in the coffin was the same face, though with closed eyes. "Ah, what have you done to me?" it still seemed to say, and Prince Andrei felt that something gave way in his soul and that he was guilty of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget.
  • Bk. IV, ch. 9

• Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.
  • Book IV, ch. 11

• You will die— and it will all be over. You will die and find out everything — or cease asking.
  • Bk. V, ch. 1

• In historical events great men— so-called — are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole courseof previous history, and predestined from all eternity.
  • Bk. IX, ch. 1

• A king is history's slave.
  • Bk. IX, ch. 1

• A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth— science — which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.
  • Bk. IX, ch. 10

• Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.
  • Bk. X, ch. 16

• The strongest of all warriors are these two— Time and Patience.
  • Bk. X, ch. 16

• At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding it; the other even more reasonable says that it is too painful and harassing to think of the danger, since it is not a man's power to provide for everything and escape from the general march of events; and that it is therefore better to turn aside from the painful subject till it has come, and to think of what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally yields to the first voice; in society to the second.
  • Bk. X, ch. 17

• War is not a courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that, and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game. As it is now, war is the favourite pastime of the idle and frivolous.
  • Bk. X, ch. 25

• He did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart from their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation of an activity unknown to him, which was his life.
  • About Platon Karataev in Bk. XII, ch. 13

• Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.
  • Thoughts of Prince Andrew Bk XII, Ch. 16

• While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory truth- that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and that those limits are very near together....
  • Bk. XIV, ch. 12

• To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved sufferings.
  • Bk. XIV, ch. 15

• For us, with the rule of right and wrong given us by Christ, there is nothing for which we have no standard. And there is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.
  • Bk. XIV, ch. 18

• Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.
  • Bk. XV, ch. 1

• History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put into words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a single nation, appears impossible.
  • Epilogue II, ch. 1

• The peculiar and amusing nature of those answers stems from the fact that modern history is like a deaf person who is in the habit of answering questions that no one has put to them.If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement of humanity and of the peoples, the first question— in the absence of a reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible — is: what is the power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously replies either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was very proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books.

  All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it is not what was asked.

  • Vol 2, pt 5, p 236— Selected Works, Moscow, 1869