War and Peace

by Leo Tolstoy

“Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times like these if one has any feeling?”

To be an enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to disappoint the expectations of those who knew her.

Here the conversation seemed interesting and he stood waiting for an opportunity to express his own views, as young people are fond of doing.

He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be sure whether what he said was very witty or very stupid.

Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the society of clever women.”

Influence in society, however, is capital which has to be economized if it is to last.

“Bâton de gueules, engrêlé de gueules d’azur—maison Condé,” said he.

“If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no wars,” he said.

“Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That’s my advice: never marry till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of, and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing—or all that is good and noble in you will be lost.

Even in the best, most friendly and simplest relations of life, praise and commendation are essential, just as grease is necessary to wheels that they may run smoothly.

love is not an earthly but a heavenly feeling.

You may die in your bed or God may spare you in a battle,”

The princess smiled as people do who think they know more about the subject under discussion than those they are talking with.

His face wore a calm look of piety and resignation to the will of God. “If you do not understand these sentiments,” he seemed to be saying, “so much the worse for you!”

He used to say that there are only two sources of human vice—idleness and superstition, and only two virtues—activity and intelligence.

it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God,

It seems as though mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and forgiveness of injuries—and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing one another.

“No, friend,” said a pleasant and as it seemed to Prince Andrew a familiar voice, “what I say is that if it were possible to know what is beyond death, none of us would be afraid of it. That’s so, friend.” Another, a younger voice, interrupted him: “Afraid or not, you can’t escape it anyhow.”

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.

He knew this at that moment as surely as if he had been standing at the altar with her. How and when this would be he did not know, he did not even know if it would be a good thing (he even felt, he knew not why, that it would be a bad thing) but he knew it would happen. Pierre dropped his eyes, lifted them again, and wished once more to see her as a distant beauty far removed from him, as he had seen her every day until then, but he could no longer do it. He could not, any more than a man who has been looking at a tuft of steppe grass through the mist and taking it for a tree, can again take it for a tree after he has once recognised it to be a tuft of grass.

“so it is useless to ask whether it is good or bad. It is good because it’s definite and one is rid of the old tormenting doubt.”

“Desire nothing for thyself, seek nothing, be not anxious or envious. Man’s future and thy own fate must remain hidden from thee but live so that thou mayest be ready for anything. If it be God’s will to prove thee in the duties of marriage, be ready to fulfil His will.” With this consoling thought (but yet with a hope for the fulfilment of her forbidden earthly longing) Princess Mary sighed, and having crossed herself went down, thinking neither of her gown and coiffure nor of how she would go in nor of what she would say. What could all that matter in comparison with the will of God, without Whose care not a hair of man’s head can fall?

The prince never directly asked himself that question, knowing beforehand that he would have to answer it justly, and justice clashed not only with his feelings but with the very possibility of life.

The universal experience of ages, showing that children do grow imperceptibly from the cradle to manhood, did not exist for the countess. Her son’s growth towards manhood at each of its stages had seemed as extraordinary to her as if there had never existed the millions of human beings who grew up in the same way. As twenty years before it seemed impossible that the little creature who lived somewhere under her heart would ever cry, suck her breast, and begin to speak, so now she could not believe that that little creature could be this strong, brave man, this model son and officer, that judging by this letter, he now was.

And the talkative Dolgorúkov, turning now to Borís now to Prince Andrew, told how Buonaparte wishing to test Markóv, our ambassador, purposely dropped a handkerchief in front of him and stood looking at Markóv, probably expecting Markóv to pick it up for him, and how Markóv immediately dropped his own beside it and picked it up without touching Buonaparte’s.

“As there’s no one to fall in love with on campaign, he’s fallen in love with the Tsar,” he said.

Just as in a clock the result of the complicated motion of innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement of the hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated human activities of 160,000 Russians and French—all their passions, desires, remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear, and enthusiasm—was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the so called battle of the three Emperors—that is to say, a slow movement of the hand on the dial of human history.

Rostóv was horrified to hear later that of all that mass of huge and handsome men, of all those brilliant, rich youths, officers and cadets, who had galloped past him on their thousand-ruble horses, only eighteen were left after the charge.

Everything seemed so futile and insignificant in comparison with the stern and solemn train of thought that weakness from loss of blood, suffering, and the nearness of death, aroused in him. Looking into Napoleon’s eyes Prince Andrew thought of the insignificance of greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one alive could understand or explain.

“Had there been no Bagratión it would have been necessary to invent him,” said the wit Shinshín, parodying the words of Voltaire.

“You know, Count, it is much more honourable to admit one’s mistake than to let matters become irreparable.

Rostóv went on ahead to do what was asked, and to his great surprise learned that Dólokhov the brawler, Dólokhov the bully, lived in Moscow with an old mother and a hunchback sister, and was the most affectionate of sons and brothers.

“What has happened?” he asked himself. “I have killed her lover, yes, killed my wife’s lover. Yes, that was it! And why? How did I come to do it?”—“Because you married her,” answered an inner voice.

Who is right and who is wrong? No one! But if you are alive—live: tomorrow you’ll die as I might have died an hour ago. And is it worth tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment of life in comparison with eternity?”

“God is merciful, doctors are never needed,” she said.

“I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and what have you done to me?”—said her charming, pathetic, dead face.

“Do you remember we had a talk about cards . . . ‘He’s a fool who trusts to luck, one should make certain,’ and I want to try.” “To try his luck or the certainty?” Rostóv asked himself.

What is bad? What is good? What should one love and what hate? What does one live for? And what am I? What is life, and what is death? What Power governs all?” There was no answer to any of these questions, except one, and that not a logical answer and not at all a reply to them. The answer was: “You’ll die and all will end. You’ll die and know all, or cease asking.” But dying was also dreadful.

“No one can attain to truth by himself. Only by laying stone on stone with the cooperation of all, by the millions of generations from our forefather Adam to our own times, is that temple reared which is to be a worthy dwelling-place of the Great God,”

“I ought to tell you that I do not believe . . . do not believe in God,” said Pierre regretfully and with an effort, feeling it essential to speak the whole truth. The mason looked intently at Pierre and smiled as a rich man with millions in hand might smile at a poor fellow who told him that he, poor man, had not the five rubles that would make him happy. “Yes, you do not know Him, my dear sir,” said the mason. “You cannot know Him. You do not know Him and that is why you are unhappy.”

“The highest wisdom and truth are like the purest liquid we may wish to imbibe,” he said. “Can I receive that pure liquid into an impure vessel and judge of its purity? Only by the inner purification of myself can I retain in some degree of purity the liquid I receive.” “Yes, yes, that is so,” said Pierre joyfully. “The highest wisdom is not founded on reason alone, not on those worldly sciences of physics, history, chemistry, and the like, into which intellectual knowledge is divided. The highest wisdom is one. The highest wisdom has but one science—the science of the whole—the science explaining the whole creation and man’s place in it. To receive that science it is necessary to purify and renew one’s inner self, and so before one can know, it is necessary to believe and to perfect one’s self. And to attain this end we have the light called conscience, that God has implanted in our souls.”

“Look then at thy inner self with the eyes of the spirit, and ask thyself whether thou art content with thyself. What hast thou attained relying on reason only? What art thou? You are young, you are rich, you are clever, you are well educated. And what have you done with all these good gifts? Are you content with yourself and with your life?” “No, I hate my life,” Pierre muttered, wincing. “Thou hatest it. Then change it, purify thyself, and as thou art purified thou wilt gain wisdom. Look at your life, my dear sir. How have you spent it? In riotous orgies and debauchery, receiving everything from society and giving nothing in return. You have become the possessor of wealth. How have you used it? What have you done for your neighbour? Have you ever thought of your tens of thousands of slaves? Have you helped them physically and morally? No! You have profited by their toil to lead a profligate life. That is what you have done. Have you chosen a post in which you might be of service to your neighbour? No! You have spent your life in idleness. Then you married, my dear sir—took on yourself responsibility for the guidance of a young woman, and what have you done? You have not helped her to find the way of truth, my dear sir, but have thrust her into an abyss of deceit and misery. A man offended you and you shot him, and you say you do not know God and hate your life. There is nothing strange in that, my dear sir!”

“In the seventh place, try, by the frequent thought of death,” the Rhetor said, “to bring yourself to regard it not as a dreaded foe, but as a friend that frees the soul grown weary in the labours of virtue from this distressful life, and leads it to its place of recompense and peace.”

“For the last time I say to you—turn all your attention upon yourself, put a bridle on your senses, and seek blessedness not in passion but in your own heart. The source of blessedness is not without us but within . . .”

“What does harm to another is wrong,” said Pierre, feeling with pleasure that for the first time since his arrival Prince Andrew was roused, had begun to talk, and wanted to express what had brought him to his present state. “And who has told you what is bad for another man?” he asked. “Bad! Bad!” exclaimed Pierre. “We all know what is bad for ourselves.” “Yes we know that, but the harm I am conscious of in myself is something I cannot inflict on others,” said Prince Andrew, growing more and more animated and evidently wishing to express his new outlook to Pierre. He spoke in French. “I only know two very real evils in life: remorse and illness. The only good is the absence of those evils. To live for myself avoiding those two evils is my whole philosophy now.”

“Come, let’s argue then,” said Prince Andrew, “You talk of schools,” he went on, crooking a finger, “education and so forth; that is, you want to raise him” (pointing to a peasant who passed by them taking off his cap) “from his animal condition and awaken in him spiritual needs, while it seems to me that animal happiness is the only happiness possible, and that is just what you want to deprive him of. I envy him, but you want to make him what I am, without giving him my means.

“No. All I say is that it is not argument that convinces me of the necessity of a future life, but this: when you go hand in hand with someone and all at once that person vanishes there, into nowhere, and you yourself are left facing that abyss, and look in. And I have looked in . . .” “Well, that’s it then! You know that there is a there and there is a Someone? There is the future life. The Someone is—God.”

“If there is a God and future life there is truth and good, and man’s highest happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must live, we must love, and we must believe that we live not only today on this scrap of earth but have lived and shall live for ever, there, in the Whole,” said Pierre, and he pointed to the sky.

a passionate devotee of the new ideas and of Speránski, and a diligent Petersburg newsmonger—one of those men who choose their opinions like their clothes, according to the fashion, but who for that very reason appear to be the warmest partisans.

“You can get to know something, you can ask for something. See how I managed from my first promotion.” (Berg measured his life not by years but by promotions.) “My comrades are still nobodies, while I am only waiting for a vacancy to command a regiment, and have the happiness to be your husband.”