Some Amazing Quotes From War and Peace

“When he returned home it was a long time before Pierre could fall asleep; he kept thinking of what had happened to him. But what had happened? Nothing. He had merely realized that a woman he had known as a child…could belong to him. ‘But she is stupid. I myself have said she is stupid,’ he thought. ‘This is not love. On the contrary, tthere is something abhorrent, something forbidden, in the feeling she arouses in me. …’ but while he was reflecting (and his reflections were still incomplete) he found himself smiling and was conscious that another line of thought had arisen…[that] he was [also] dreaming of how she would be his wife, how she would love him, might become quite different, and how everything he had thought and heard about her might be untrue. … And once more he told himself that it was impossible … But at the same time he experienced this convction, in another part of his mind her image rose in all its feminine beauty.” (I, 3, i.)

(While thinking about proposing to this girl): “‘This happiness is not for you,’ some inner voice said to him. ‘This happiness is for those who do not have within them what you have.'” (I, 3, ii)

“The growth of her son had been for her at every stage as extraordinary as though millions and millions of men had not already developed in the same way.” (I, 3, iv)

“To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.” (I, 3, vii)

“Only after Prince Andrei had gone did Rostov think of what he ought to have said in reply to him. And he was still more angry for not having said it. … Whether to go to headquarters the next day and challenge that pretentious little adjutant to a duel, or to let the matter drop, was a question that tormented him all the way back. At one moment he thought with animosity of the pleasure it would give hm to see the fright of that proud, weak little man when facing the pistol; the next moment he felt with amazement that of all the men he knew there was no one he would rather have as a friend than that same detestable little adjutant.” (I, 3, vii)