Quotes · verified word for word in the text
War and Peace quotes
12 quotes from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #2600 (public domain in the USA), the text this site’s reader shows. Each quote is copied exactly from that text and links to its passage in the reader; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against the reader’s text.
“If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no wars,” he said.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter VI
“Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here,” said the spirit of the place.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter XI
But pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.
“Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.”
— Spoken by a character · Chapter XVI
“It all depends on the bringing up,” remarked the visitor.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter XII
“From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.”
— Spoken by a character · Chapter XVIII
“All we can know is that we know nothing. And that’s the height of human wisdom.”
— Spoken by a character · Chapter I
If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of life is destroyed.
Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the society of clever women.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter IV
God is the same everywhere.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter XII
* Those whom (God) wishes to destroy he drives mad.
The whole world is now for me divided into two halves: one half is she, and there all is joy, hope, light: the other half is everything where she is not, and there is all gloom and darkness....
— Prince Andrew · Chapter XXII