Last Updated on July 20, 2020 by Scott M. Thomas
War And Peace is a novel by Russian author Leo Tolstoy. This is one of the most wonderful creations in literature. This novel based on the Russian expedition of Napoleon Bonaparte. The problems of war and the struggle of human beings for peace is the main theme of this novel. Tolstoy has deeply and clearly portrayed the life and values of nineteenth-century Russia. I read this book a few days ago. Here I just covered many of his famous sayings & quotes. Hope this war And Peace quotes make your day beautiful.
“I’ll flatten you like a pancake — turn back!” – Leo Tolstoy
“But you’re still afraid,’ the first familiar voice went on. ‘Afraid of the unknown, that’s what. However much we say that the soul will go to heaven…we know that there is no heaven, but only atmosphere” – Leo Tolstoy
“Every soldier felt pleased with heart, knowing that many, many more Russian soldiers were going where he was going, that is, no one knew where” – Leo Tolstoy
“Well, pray if you like, only you’d do better to use your judgment” – Leo Tolstoy
“Those whom God wishes to destroy he drives mad” – Leo Tolstoy
“Speech is silver but silence is golden” – Leo Tolstoy
“Natasha fell in love from the moment she entered the ballroom. She was not in love with anyone in particular, but with everyone” – Leo Tolstoy
“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” – Leo Tolstoy
“The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there everything is dejection and darkness…” – Leo Tolstoy
“Since the day his wife arrived in Moscow, Pierre had been intending to go somewhere, only so as not to be there with her” – Leo Tolstoy
“There are two sides to each man’s life: his personal life, which is the freer the more abstract its interests, and his elemental, swarm-like life, where man inevitably fulfills the laws prescribed for him” – Leo Tolstoy
“Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the achievement of historical, universally human goals” – Leo Tolstoy
“Natasha walked in her violet dress with black lace as women know how to walk — the more calmly and majestically, the more pained and ashamed she felt at heart” – Leo Tolstoy
“The ancients left us examples of heroic poems in which heroes constitute the entire interest of history, and we still cannot get used to the fact that, for our human time, history of this sort has no meaning” – Leo Tolstoy
“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” – Leo Tolstoy
“Yes, death is an awakening” – Leo Tolstoy
“When a man sees a dying animal, horror comes over him: that which he himself is, his essence, is obviously being annihilated before his eyes — is ceasing to be” – Leo Tolstoy
“I don’t know since when I’ve loved her. But I’ve loved only her, her alone, all my life, and I love her so much that I can’t imagine my life without her” – Leo Tolstoy
“He was putting together, as he said, a serious library, and made it a rule to read all the books he bought” – Leo Tolstoy
“Not dear for being pretty, but pretty for being dear. Men only love Malvina and the like because they’re beautiful: but do I love my wife? It’s not loving, but just…I don’t know how to tell you. Without you, or like today, when there’s some falling-out between us, it’s as if I’m lost and can’t do anything. Well, do I love my finger? I don’t love it, but try cutting it off…” – Leo Tolstoy
“Kings are the slaves of history” – Leo Tolstoy
“God is the same everywhere” – Leo Tolstoy
“What is War and Peace? It is not a novel, still less an epic poem, still less a historical chronicle. War and Peace is what the author wanted and was able to express, in the form in which it is expressed” – Leo Tolstoy
“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom” – Leo Tolstoy
“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women” – Leo Tolstoy
“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war” – Leo Tolstoy
“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth” – Leo Tolstoy
“Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I’m alive, I must live and be happy” – Leo Tolstoy
“It’s not given to people to judge what’s right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong” – Leo Tolstoy
“If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed” – Leo Tolstoy
“We are asleep until we fall in Love!” – Leo Tolstoy
“I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself” – Leo Tolstoy
“I don’t know what will happen then, I don’t want to know and I can’t know; but if I want this, want glory, want to be known to people, want to be loved by them, it’s not my fault that I want it, that it’s the only thing I want, the only thing I live for. Yes, the only thing! I’ll never tell it to anyone, but my God! what am I to do if I love nothing except glory, except people’s love? Death, wounds, loss of family, nothing frightens me. And however near and dear many people are to me — my father, my sister, my wife — the dearest people to me — but, however terrible and unnatural it seems, I’d give them all now for a moment of glory, of triumph over people, for love from people I don’t know and will never know, for the love of these people here” – Leo Tolstoy
“Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid” – Leo Tolstoy
“Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself” – Leo Tolstoy
“How can one be well…when one suffers morally?” – Leo Tolstoy
“Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it” – Leo Tolstoy
“It’s all God’s will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle” – Leo Tolstoy
“Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy” – Leo Tolstoy
“Life did not stop, and one had to live” – Leo Tolstoy
“Everything depends on upbringing” – Leo Tolstoy
“They say: sufferings are misfortunes,” said Pierre. ‘But if at once this minute, I was asked, would I remain what I was before I was taken prisoner, or go through it all again, I should say, for God’s sake let me rather be a prisoner and eat horseflesh again. We imagine that as soon as we are torn out of our habitual path all is over, but it is only the beginning of something new and good. As long as there is life, there is happiness. There is a great deal, a great deal before us” – Leo Tolstoy
“Here I am alive, and it’s not my fault, so I have to try and get by as best I can without hurting anybody until death takes over” – Leo Tolstoy
“One must be cunning and wicked in this world” – Leo Tolstoy
“In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning” – Leo Tolstoy
“You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is irrefutable proof of freedom” – Leo Tolstoy
“Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult” – Leo Tolstoy
“There will be today, there will be tomorrow, there will be always, and there was yesterday, and there was the day before…” – Leo Tolstoy
“We love people not so much for the good they’ve done us, as for the good we’ve done them” – Leo Tolstoy
“Life is everything. Life is God. Everything shifts and moves and this movement is God. And while there is life, there is a delight in the self-awareness of the divinity. To love life is to love God. The hardest and most blissful thing is to love this life in one’s suffering, in the guiltlessness of suffering” – Leo Tolstoy
“When one’s head is gone one doesn’t weep over one’s hair!” – Leo Tolstoy
“The same question arose in every soul: “For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?”… p982” – Leo Tolstoy
“For if we allow that human life is always guided by reason, we destroy the premise that life is possible at all” – Leo Tolstoy
“Life is too long to say anything definitely; always say perhaps” – Leo Tolstoy
“He did what heroes do after their work is accomplished; he died” – Leo Tolstoy
“Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered” – Leo Tolstoy
“For a few seconds they looked silently into each other’s eyes, and the distant and impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable” – Leo Tolstoy
“We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is happiness. There is much, much before us” – Leo Tolstoy
“In order to understand, observe, deduce, man, must first be conscious of himself as alive” – Leo Tolstoy
“He had the unlucky capacity many men have of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to take any serious part in it” – Leo Tolstoy
“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
“What is bad? What is good? What should one love, what hate? Why live, and what am I? What is a lie, what is death? What power rules over everything?” he asked himself. And there was no answer to any of these questions except one, which was not logical and was not at all an answer to these questions. This answer was: “You will die–and everything will end. You will die and learn everything–or stop asking” – Leo Tolstoy
“How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what?… All will end in death, all!” – Leo Tolstoy
“But our idea is that the wolves should be fed and the sheep kept safe” – Leo Tolstoy
“A man’s every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body” – Leo Tolstoy
“There are such repulsive faces in the world” – Leo Tolstoy
“I’m getting old, that’s the thing! What’s in me now won’t be there anymore” – Leo Tolstoy
“It’s not those who are handsome we love, but those we love who are handsome” – Leo Tolstoy
“He never chooses an opinion, he just wears whatever happens to be in style” – Leo Tolstoy
“I often think of how unfairly life’s good fortune is sometimes distributed” – Leo Tolstoy
“I don’t think badly of people. I like everybody, and I’m sorry for everybody” – Leo Tolstoy
“I think that when you remember, remember, remember everything like that, you could go on until you remember what was there before you were in the world” – Leo Tolstoy
“Everything I know, I know because of love” – Leo Tolstoy
“Power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand” – Leo Tolstoy
“Pierre was one of those people who are strong only when they feel perfectly pure” – Leo Tolstoy
“Lay me down like a stone oh God, and raise me up like a new bread” – Leo Tolstoy
“What a terrible thing war is, what a terrible thing!” – Leo Tolstoy
“Chance created the situation; genius made use of it” – Leo Tolstoy
“A limit has been set to human life, which cannot be overstepped” – Leo Tolstoy
“Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible” – Leo Tolstoy
“He used to say that there were only two sources of human vice: idleness and superstition; and that there were only two virtues: activity and intelligence” – Leo Tolstoy
“He went on in the same way, in French, pronouncing in Russian only those words he wanted to underscore contemptuously” – Leo Tolstoy
Inspirational Sayings By Leo Tolstoy
“Try to weep. Nothing relieves one like tears” – Leo Tolstoy
“Youth is no impediment to bravery” – Leo Tolstoy
“You are young, you are rich, you are educated, my dear sir. What have you done with all these good things that have been given to you? Are you content with yourself and your life?” – Leo Tolstoy
“Love hinders death. Love is life. Everything, everything I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is connected only by that” – Leo Tolstoy
“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience” – Leo Tolstoy
“You can love a person dear to you with human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love” – Leo Tolstoy
“Here’s my advice to you: don’t marry until you can tell yourself that you’ve done all you could and until you’ve stopped loving the women you’ve chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you’ll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you’re old and good for nothing…Otherwise all that’s good and lofty in you will be lost” – Leo Tolstoy
“Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait . . . there is nothing stronger than these two: patience and time, they will do it all” – Leo Tolstoy
“A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it” – Leo Tolstoy
“It’s too easy to criticize a man when he’s out of favor, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else’s mistakes” – Leo Tolstoy
“The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the greater the number of people he is connected with, the more power he has over other people, the more obvious is the predestination and inevitability of his every action” – Leo Tolstoy
“It’s different for you and me. You study, you become enlightened; I study, I become confused” – Leo Tolstoy
