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"I'm not a goose, you're the gooses for crying over nothing"

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"Each man lives for himself, uses his freedom to achieve his personal goals, and feels with his whole being that right now he can or cannot do such-and-such an action; but as soon as he does it, this action, committed at a certain moment in time, becomes irreversible, and makes itself the property of history, in which is has not a free but a predestined significance."

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom."

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"Those are the men,' added Bolkonsky with a sigh which he could not suppress, as they went out of the palace, 'those are the men who decide the fate of nations."

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"But to us of a later generation...it is inconceivable that millions of Christian men should have killed and tortured each other, because Napoleon was ambitious, Alexander firm, English policy crafty, and the Duke of Oldenburg hardly treated. We cannot grasp the connections between these circumstances and the bare fact of murder and violence, nor why the duke's wrongs should induce thousands of men from the other side of Europe to pillage and murder the inhabitants of the Smolensk and Moscow provinces and to be slaughtered by them."

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"But all these hints at foreseeing what actually did happen on the French as well as on the Russian side are only conspicuous now because the event has justified them. If the event had not come to pass, these hints would have been forgotten, as thousands and millions of suggestions and supposition are now forgotten that were current at the period, but have been shown by time to be unfounded and so have been consigned to oblivion."

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"To us, it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg was wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have the with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them."

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"What a terrible thing war is, what a terrible thing!"

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"Life meanwhile, the actual life of men with their real interests of health and sickness, labour and rest, with their interests of thought, science, poetry, music, love, affection, hatred, passion, went its way, as always, independently, apart from the political amity or enmity of Napoleon Bonaparte, and apart from all possible reforms."

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she would not be happy"

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"Rostov kept thinking about that brilliant feat of his, which, to his surprise, had gained him the St. George Cross and even given him the reputation of a brave man - and there was something in it that he was unable to understand. "So they're even more afraid than we are!" he thought. "So that's all there is to so-called heroism? And did I really do it for the fatherland? And what harm had he done, with his dimple and his light blue eyes? But how frightened he was! He thought I'd kill him. Why should I kill him? My hand faltered. And they gave me the St. George Cross. I understand nothing, nothing!"

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"It was necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power -- the soldiers who fired, or transported provisions and guns -- should consent to carry out the will of these weak individuals..."

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"Davout looked up and gazed intently at him. For some seconds they looked at one another, and that look saved Pierre. Apart from conditions of war and law, that look established human relations between the two men. At that moment an immense number of things passed dimly through both their minds, and they realized that they were both children of humanity and were brothers."

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"A battle is won by the side that is absolutely determined to win. Why did we lose the battle of Austerlitz? Our casualties were about the same as those of the French, but we had told ourselves early in the day that the battle was lost, so it was lost."

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"He remembered his mother's love for him, and his family's, and his friends', and the enemy's intention to kill him seemed impossible."

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"Millions of men, renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to east to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east to the west slaying their fellows."

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war."

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"There lay between them, separating them, that same terrible line of the unknown and of fear, like the line separating the living from the dead."

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it."

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience."

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

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