Give War and Peace a Chance Quotes

“Yet, in spite of such pervasive, even relentless injustice, the best Russians I know display a remarkable inner strength and a commitment to living with as much dignity as they can.”
― Andrew D. Kaufman, Give War and Peace a Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times

“or rather cause us to hunker down in little bunkers of self-involvement? And when we find ourselves confronted with a less-than-ideal work environment, do we merely trade our large spirits for the smaller comforts of job security, or, like Captain Tushin, find some way to infuse the mundane madness of the workplace with the spark of our own inspiration?”
― Andrew D. Kaufman, Give War and Peace a Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times

“Once we’re thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost; but it’s only here that the new and the good begins.” —War and Peace, Volume 4, Part 4, Chapter 17”
― Andrew D. Kaufman, Give War and Peace a Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times

“No matter how old or how sick you are, how much or little you have done, your business in life not only isn’t finished, but hasn’t yet received its final, decisive meaning until your very last breath.” This feisty, life-affirming spirit underlies”
― Andrew D. Kaufman, Give War and Peace a Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times

“one of the most famous of his later works of nonfiction, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, he responded directly to this criticism. “Blessedness,” Tolstoy writes in that book, first published in Germany, in 1894, after being banned in Russia, “consists in progress towards perfection; to stand still in any condition whatever means the cessation of this blessedness.” To tell somebody that striving toward such a high ideal is hopelessly naïve, Tolstoy writes, is just like telling a man who is struggling on a swift river and is directing his course against the current, that it is impossible to cross the river against the current, and that to cross it he must point in the direction of the point he wants to reach. In reality, in order to reach the place to which he wants to go, he must row with all his strength toward a point much higher up.”
― Andrew D. Kaufman, Give War and Peace a Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times