War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
“Never, never get married, my friend! This is my advice to you. Do not marry until you have come to the conclusion that you have done all it is in your power to do, and until you have ceased to love the woman whom you have chosen, until you have seen clearly what she is; otherwise you will make a sad and irreparable mistake. When you are old and good for nothing, then get married … Otherwise, all that is good and noble in you will be thrown away. All will be wasted in trifles. Yes, yes, yes!” – Prince Andrei (p. 17).
But, as happens to men of no strength of character, he immediately felt such a violent desire to have one more last taste of this dissipated life, so well known to him, that he determined to go. And, in excuse for it, the thought entered his mind that his promise was not binding, because before he had given it to Prince Andrei, he had also promised Anatol to be present at his house; moreover, he reasoned that all such pledges were merely conditional and had no definite meaning, especially if it were taken into consideration that perhaps by the next day he might be dead, or something might happen to him so extraordinary that the distinctions of honorable and dishonorable would entire vanish. Arguments of this nature often occurred to Pierre, entirely nullifying his plans and purposes. (p. 19).
They had not met for almost six months, and in such an interval, when young men have been taking their first steps on the pathway of life, each finds in the other immense changes due to surroundings so entirely different from those in which they took the first steps of life. Both had changed greatly since they had last met, and each was equally anxious to show the changes to the other. (p. 141).
This year the count had plenty of money, having mortgaged all his possessions, and consequently Nikolai, who kept his own fast trotter, and wore the most stylish riding trousers of the latest cut, such as had never before been seen in Moscow, and likewise the most fashionable boots, with very pointed toes and little silver spurs, could spend his time very agreeably. (p. 174).
Never at the Rostofs’ had that enchanting tremor of passion and that mood of love been felt so strongly as during these days of the Christmastide. “Seize these moments of happiness; let yourself drift into love; become enamored yourself. This is the only genuine bliss in the world; everything else is dross. And with this alone all of us here are exclusively occupied,” said this mood. (p. 193).
“What is wrong? What is right? What must one love? What must one hate? What is the purpose of life, and what am I? What is life, and what is death? What is the Power that directs all things?” he asked himself. And there as no answer to any one of the questions, except the one, the illogical answer which did not in reality fit any of these questions.
The answer was: “Thou shalt die – all will come to end! Thou shalt die and know all, or else cease to question.” But the mere thought of death was terrible to him. (p. 205).
“I must tell you, I do not believe … do not believe in God,” said Pierre, with an effort and a sense of regret, but feeling it indispensable to confess the whole truth.
The Mason looked earnestly at Pierre and smiled, much as a rich man with millions might smile upon a poor man who told him that five rubles would make him the happiest of men.
“Yes, you do not know Him, my dear sir,” said the Mason. “You cannot know Him – you cannot know Him; therefore, you are unhappy.”
“Yes, yes, I am unhappy,” repeated Pierre. “But what am I to do?”
“You do not know Him, my dear sir, and therefore you are very unhappy. You do not know Him, but He is here; He is in me, He is in my words; He is in you, and even in those blasphemous words that you have just uttered,” said the Mason, in his stern sonorous voice.
He paused and sighed, evidently trying to master his emotion.
“If He did not exist,” said he, gently, “you and I would not be speaking about Him, my dear sir. Of what, of whom, have we been speaking? Whom didst thou deny?” he suddenly asked, with a tone of enraptured sternness and power in his voice. “Who could have invented Him if He did not exist? How camest though to have the hypothesis that such an incomprehensible being exists? How came you and all the world to suppose the existence of an incomprehensible Being – a Being omnipotent, eternal, and infinite in all His attributes?”
He paused, and remained silent for some time.
Pierre could not and would not break in upon his silence.
“He is, but it is hard to comprehend Him,” said the Mason at last, looking not into Pierre’s face, but straight ahead, while his aged-looking hands, which he could not keep quiet owing to his internal excitement, kept turning over the leaves of his book. “If it were a man whose existence thou disbelieved, I could bring this man to thee, I would take him by the hand and who him to thee. But how can I, an insignificant mortal, show all His omnipotence, all His infinity, all His goodness, to him who is blind, or to him who shuts his eyes in order not to see, not to comprehend Him, and not to see and not to comprehend all his own vileness and depravity?” He paused again. “Who art though? What art though? Thou imaginest that thou art heroic because thou canst utter those blasphemous words,” said he, with a saturnine and scornful laugh. “And thou art stupider and less intelligent than a little child, who, playing with the artistically constructed parts of a clock, should dare to say that because he did not understand the clock, he did not believe in the artificer who made it. To comprehend Him is hard. For ages, since our first ancestor Adam even down to our own days, we have been striving to comprehend Him, and we are still infinitely far from the attainment of our purpose; but, while we cannot comprehend Him, we see only our feebleness and His majesty.” (p. 207-208).
He was undergoing the unhappy experience of many people, especially Russians, who have not only the faculty of seeing and realizing the possibility of goodness and right, but of seeing too clearly the falsity and deception of life to feel able to take any serious part in it. (p. 310).
Sometimes he remembered what he had heard of soldiers at war: that when they are lying idle under fire, they eagerly strive to invent some diversion, to forget more easily the threatening danger. And it seemed to Pierre that all men were similar soldiers, distracting themselves from life: some by ambition, some by cards, some by codifying laws, some by women, some by gambling, some by horses, some by politics, some by hunting, some by wine, some by statecraft.
“There is nothing insignificant, there is nothing of great importance; all is the same in the end; only how can I save myself from it?” thought Pierre. “Only by not seeing it, this terrible it.” (p. 311).
Every man has a twofold life: On one side is his personal life, which is free in proportion as its interests are abstract; the other is life as an element, as one bee in the swarm; and here a man has no chance of disregarding the laws imposed on him. The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more men he is connected with, the greater the influence he exerts over others – the more evident is the predestined and unavoidable necessity of his every action.
The king is the slave of history. In the events of history, so-called great men are merely tags that supply a name to the event, and have quite as little connection with the event itself as the tag.
Every one of their actions, though apparently performed by their own free will, is, in its historical significance, out of the scope of volition, and is correlated with the whole trend of history; and is, consequently, preordained from all eternity. (p. 365).
Though the enemy was approaching Moscow, the Muscovites were not inclined to regard their situation with any greater degree of seriousness; on the contrary; the matter was treated with peculiar lightness, as is always the case with people who see a great catastrophe approaching. At such a time, two voices are always heard speaking loudly in the heart of man: the one, with perfect reasonableness, always preaches the reality of the peril and counsels him to seek for means of avoiding it; the other, with a still greater show of reason, declares that it is too painful and difficult to think about danger, since it is not in the power of man to foresee everything or to escape the inevitable course of events; and, therefore, it is better to shut the yes to the disagreeable until it actually comes, and to think only of what is pleasant. When a man is alone, he generally gives himself up to the first voice, but in society, on the contrary, to the second. This was the case at the present time with the inhabitants of Moscow. Moscow had not been so gay for a long time as it was that year. (p. 445).
If there were none of this magnanimity in warfare, then we would only undertake it when, as now, it was a matter for which it was worth while to meet one’s death. Then there would not be war because Pavel Ivanitch had insulted Mikhail Ivanitch. But if there must be war like the present one, let it be war. Then the zeal and intensity of the troops would always be like what it is now. Then all these Westphalians and Hessians whom Napoleon has brought with him would not have come against us to Russia, and we would never have gone to fight in Austria and Prussia without knowing why. War is not sweetness and light, but the dirtiest thing in the world, and it is necessary to understand it as such and not to play at war. It is necessary to take this frightful necessity sternly and seriously. This is the core of the matter; avoid falsehood, let war be war, and not sport. For otherwise war becomes a favorite pastime for idle and frivolous men. The military are the most honored of any class.
“But what is war, and what is necessary for its success, and what are the laws of military society? The end and aim of war is murder; the weapons of war are espionage, and treachery and the encouragement of treachery, the ruin of the inhabitants, and pillage and robbery of their possessions for the maintenance of the troops; deception and lies which pass under the name of military finesse. (p. 459).
The gratification of desires – good food, cleanliness, independence – now that he was deprived of them all, seemed to Pierre perfect happiness; and the choice of occupation – that is, life – now when this choice was so limited, seemed to him such as easy matter that he forgot that the freedom which in his case was given him by his culture, his health, his position in society, is exactly what makes a choice of occupations hopelessly difficult and destroys the very desire and possibility of occupation. (p. 593).
Since the moment Pierre had recognized the reappearance of that mysterious power, nothing seemed to him strange or terrible: neither these women hastening no one knew where, nor the conflagration that had destroyed Moscow. All that he now saw produced scarcely any impression on him – as if his soul, preparing for a hard struggle, refused to submit to any impressions that might render it weaker. (p. 596).
Very often, in moments of irritation , it would happen that husband and wife would argue; but long after the quarrel was forgotten, Pierre would discover, to his joy and amazement, not only in what his wife said but in what she did, his own ideas. And not only would he find his own idea, but he would find it purified of everything superfluous.
After seven years of married life, Pierre felt a joyous, settled consciousness that he was not a bad man, and this consciousness arose from the fact that he saw himself reflected in his wife. In himself he felt that all that was good and bad was mixed together and confused. But in his wife only that which was truly good found expression; all that was not absolutely good was discarded in her. And this reflection was not the result of a logical process of thought, but came from some other mysterious inner source. (p. 681).
Natasha and her husband, left alone, also talked as only wife and husband can talk, namely, with extraordinary clearness and swiftness, recognizing and communicating each other’s thoughts, by a method contrary to all logic, without the aid of reasoning, syllogism, and deductions, but with absolute freedom. Natasha had become so used to talking thus freely with her husband that the surest sign, in her mind, that something was wrong between them was for Pierre to give a logical turn to his arguments with her. When he began to bring proofs and to talk with calm deliberation, and when she, carried away by his example, began to do the same, she knew they were surely on the verge of a quarrel. (p. 692).