Big books. My biggest frenemy. I love them when the genre is thriller, but struggle to read them when it’s a classic or a historical fiction. Nonetheless, we can’t deny the magic classic novels hold. They are timeless, and the world inside them demands patience.
Tolstoy’s War and Peace is the perfect example of i,t and it was my ultimate test of that love-hate relationship I share with thick books. It is about everything that makes us human and what it’s like living in this world. Love, fear, pride, loss, and the endless search for meaning. After 8 years of starting and DNFing, I was finally able to finish it. Now I know why it’s one of literature’s greatest feats.
If you too find it hard to read dense novels but you also want to come across as a wise person who has read the book, the article has your back. The book is a literary mountain, but you don’t have to turn all 1,200 pages to grasp its wisdom. So, I have gathered the best quotes from War and Peace that capture the spirit of this novel.
- “If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”
- “We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”
- “The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”
- “Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.”
- “Everything I know, I know because of love.”
- “There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”
- “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 is dejection and darkness.”
- “It’s all God’s will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.”
- “Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.”
- “In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
- “We are asleep until we fall in love!”
- “A man on a thousand-mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, ‘Today I’m going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up to the next morning.’”
- “It’s not given to people to judge what’s right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will eternally be mistaken about it.”
- “Each of us is only one of the instruments for accomplishing the general work of humanity.”
- “All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.”
- “Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”
- “There is something in this world that you love more than yourself.”
- “Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world.”
- “The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.”
- “The truth is that life is very simple, and what we call complications are simply our own desires.”
- “A battle is won by those who firmly resolve to win it.”
- “The only thing that we know is that we know nothing, and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.”
- “Everything depends on upbringing.”
- “Kings are the slaves of history.”
- “It is not beauty that endears, it’s love that makes us see beauty.”
- “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.”
- “To love life is to love God, since life is His manifestation.”
- “Yes, love, …but not the love that loves for something, to gain something, or because of something, but that love that I felt for the first time, when dying, I saw my enemy and yet loved him. I knew that feeling of love which is the essence of the soul, for which no object is needed. And I know that blissful feeling now too. To love one’s neighbours; to love one’s enemies. To love everything – to Love God in all His manifestations. Some one dear to one can be loved with human love; but an enemy can only be loved with divine love. And that was why I felt such joy when I felt that I loved that man. What happened to him? Is he alive? …Loving with human love, one may pass from love to hatred; but divine love cannot change. Nothing, not even death, can shatter it. It is the very nature of the soul. And how many people I have hated in my life. And of all people none I have loved and hated more than her…. If it were only possible for me to see her once more… once, looking into those eyes to say…”
- “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.”
- “How can one be well…when one suffers morally?”
- “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.”
- “Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.” These thoughts seemed to him comforting. But they were only thoughts. Something was lacking in them, they were not clear, they were too one-sidedly personal and brain-spun. And there was the former agitation and obscurity.”
- “In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive.”
- “Those whom God wishes to destroy he drives mad.”
- “Chance created the situation; genius made use of it.”
It’s okay if you haven’t read the entire book. Just reading these handful quotes from War and Peace can leave a lasting impression. Tolstoy’s insights about love, death, fate, God, and courage is still relevant in today’s times. Perhaps that’s why the book is timeless. It teaches us not how to win wars, but how to find peace within ourselves.
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