War and Peace

by Leo Tolstoy

Hélène smiled with an air that said she did not allow the possibility that anyone could see her and not feel admiration.

And at that moment Pierre felt that Hélène not only could, but must be his wife, that it could not be otherwise. He knew it at that moment as certainly as he would have known it standing at the altar with her. How it would be and when, he did not know; he did not even know whether it would be good (he even felt that it was not good for some reason), but he knew that it would be.

Prince Vassily had to decide things with Pierre, who of late had indeed been spending whole days at home, that is, at Prince Vassily’s, where he lived, and who was ridiculous, agitated, and stupid (as a man in love ought to be) in Hélène’s presence, but had still not made a proposal.

Anatole was not resourceful, not quick and eloquent in conversation, but he had instead a capacity, precious in society, for composure and unalterable assurance.

Her favorite sonata transported her into her innermost poetic world, and the gaze she felt upon her endowed that world with still greater poetry.

All the worldwide, age-old experience showing that children grow in an imperceptible way from the cradle to manhood, did not exist for the countess. Her son’s maturing had been at every point as extraordinary for her as if there had not been millions upon millions of men who had matured in just the same way.

As in a clock the result of the complex movement of numberless wheels and pulleys is merely the slow and measured movement of the hands pointing to the time, so also the result of all the complex human movements of these hundred and sixty thousand Russians and French—all the passions, desires, regrets, humiliations, sufferings, bursts of pride, fear, rapture—was merely the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the so-called battle of the three emperors, that is, a slow movement of the world-historical hand on the clockface of human history.

Natasha laughed at every word he said and she said—not because what they were saying was funny, but because she felt merry and was unable to hold back her joy, which expressed itself in laughter.

And Natasha got up on tiptoe and walked out of the room as ballet dancers do, but smiling as only happy fifteen-year-old girls do.

Just then Anna Mikhailovna stepped inaudibly into the room, with the business-like, preoccupied, and at the same time meek Christian look that never left her.

He took the pistol in his hands and began asking how to pull the trigger, because until then he had never handled a pistol, something he did not want to admit. “Ah, yes, like that, I know, I just forgot,” he said.

“Louis XVI was executed for being, as they said, dishonest and criminal,” came into Pierre’s head, “and they were right from their point of view, and equally right were those who died a martyr’s death for him and counted him among the saints. Then Robespierre11 was executed because he was a despot. Who’s right, and who’s wrong? No one. You’re alive—so live: tomorrow you’ll die, just as I could have died an hour ago. And is it worth suffering, when there’s only a second left to live compared with eternity?”

“No, but I have fallen in love and will fall in love a thousand times, though I have no such feeling of friendship, trust, and love for anyone but you.

“Don’t say that to me. I don’t want anything. I love you as a brother, and will love you always, and I need nothing more.”

ewww

“Ahh!” Rostov nearly cried, seizing his hair with both hands. The seven he needed was lying on top, the first card in the deck. He had lost more than he could pay.

He had decided to continue playing until the score grew to forty-three thousand. He had chosen this number because forty-three made up the sum of his age plus Sonya’s.

My heart

Denisov, eyes shining and hair disheveled, was sitting, his leg thrust back, at the clavichord, banging out chords on it with his stubby fingers and, his eyes rolling, was singing in his small, hoarse, but true voice some verses of his own composition, “The Sorceress,” which he was trying to set to music.

Her voice had that virgin, intact quality, that unawareness of its strength, that unpolished velvetiness, which were so combined with a deficiency in the art of singing that it seemed impossible to change anything in this voice without spoiling it.

“No help for it! It happens to everybody,” his son said in a careless, brazen tone, while in his soul he considered himself a villain, a scoundrel, whose whole life would not be enough to redeem his crime.

right. Nothing has been discovered,” Pierre again said to himself, “nothing has been invented. We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”

“I’m afraid I’m very far from understanding—how shall I put it—I’m afraid my way of thinking about the universe is so much the opposite of yours that we won’t understand each other.”

But how can I, an insignificant mortal, show all His almightiness, all His eternity, all His goodness to one who is blind, or who closes his eyes so as not to see, not to understand his own loathsomeness and depravity?”

“The supreme wisdom is based not on reason alone, not on the secular sciences of physics, history, chemistry, and so on, into which rational knowledge is divided. The higher knowledge has one science—the science of the all, the science that explains the whole universe and the place man occupies in it. To contain this science, it is necessary to purify and renew one’s inner man, and thus before one can know, one must believe and perfect oneself. And to achieve that, a divine light, called conscience, has been put in our soul.”

“try by frequent thoughts of death to bring yourself to the point where it no longer seems a fearsome enemy to you, but a friend … who delivers the soul grown weary in the labors of virtue from this calamitous life and leads it to the place of recompense and peace.”

He winced, blushed, rose up, sank back, working on himself in what was for him the most difficult thing in life—to say something unpleasant to a person’s face, to say something that the person, whoever he might be, was not expecting.

He read, not understanding half of it, read only so as to stop thinking for at least a minute about what he had been thinking of exclusively and painfully for all too long.

mood af

Having entered once more into these definite conditions of regimental life, Rostov experienced a joy and peace similar to what a weary man feels when he lies down to rest.

Painful work was going on in his mind, which he could not bring to an end. Terrible doubts arose in his soul.

Life meanwhile, people’s real life with its essential concerns of health, illness, work, rest, with its concerns of thought, learning, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, passions, went on as always, independently and outside of any political closeness or enmity with Napoleon Bonaparte and outside all possible reforms.

The smile vanished from Speranksy’s white face, and his physiognomy gained much from it.

He sometimes noticed with displeasure that he had happened to repeat the same thing on the same day in different companies. But he was so busy for whole days that he had no time to think about the fact that he was doing nothing.

that first evening which Bolkonsky spent with him, talking about the legislative commission, Speransky told Prince Andrei ironically that this commission had existed for a hundred and fifty years, had cost millions, and had done nothing, except that Rosenkampf had glued little labels to all the articles of comparative legislation.

Only one thing, there’s no need for more women in my house; let him marry and live separately. Maybe you’ll move in with him?” he turned to Princess Marya. “God help you, and good riddance … good riddance!…”

The love of idleness remained the same in fallen man, but the curse still weighs on man, and not only because we must win our bread in the sweat of our face,1 but because our moral qualities are such that we are unable to be idle and at peace.

The closer he came, the more strongly, far more strongly (as if moral feeling was also subject to the law of attraction, which increases in inverse proportion to the square of the distance), he thought of his home; at the last station before Otradnoe, he gave the driver three roubles for vodka and soon, breathless as a boy, was running up the front porch of the house.

What was going on in that childishly receptive soul, so greedily grasping and absorbing all the diverse impressions of life?

Only when he had drunk a bottle or two of wine did he become dimly aware that the tangled, terrible knot of life, which had formerly terrified him, was not as frightening as it seemed to him.

Meeting at a large gathering, Julie and Boris looked at each other as the only people in a sea of the indifferent who understood each other.

Though Boris had come with the intention of speaking of his love, and therefore intended to be tender, he began speaking irritably of women’s inconstancy: of how easily women could go from sadness to joy, and that their mood depended only on who was courting them. Julie became offended and said that it was all true, that a woman needed diversity, that one and the same thing all the time would bore anyone.

“And he must be calming his fiancée’s jealousy of me. They needn’t worry! If only they knew how little I care about them all!”

Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the achievement of historical, universally human goals.

An action once committed is irrevocable, and its effect, coinciding in time with millions of actions of other people, acquires historical significance.

There exists in men a certain after-dinner state of mind which, more strongly than any reasonable causes, makes a man feel content with himself and consider everyone his friend. Napoleon was in that state of mind.

Writing the words l’empereur Napoléon in this alphabet of numbers, it turns out that the sum of the figures equals 666 and that Napoleon is therefore that beast prophesied in the Apocalypse.

To study the laws of history, we must change completely the object of observation, leave kings, ministers, and generals alone, and study the uniform, infinitesimal elements that govern the masses.

To her mind, the meaning of any religion consisted only in observing certain decencies while satisfying human desires.

(the admiration of others was that grease for the wheels which was necessary if her machine was to run perfectly freely),

when even the nights are warm, and when in those dark, warm nights the sky, frightening and gladdening, ceaselessly pours down golden stars.

grandeur as Napoleon understood it.

People’s understanding was tuned to a higher pitch, and this was too simple, needlessly simple; it was something any of them could have said, and that a ukase issuing from the highest authority therefore could not say.