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| Translator | Richard, Larissa Pevear & Volokhonsky |
| First Written | 1867 |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Origin | Russia |
| Publisher | Vintage |
| ISBN-10 | 1400079985 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1400079988 |
| My Copy | paperback, divided into four sections |
| First Read | April 23, 2006 |
War and Peace
I re-read this back in 2011 or so, and found it really dull. But I picked it up again in January of 2014 and it was absolutely riveting; I have no idea what the difference was.
Noted on February 17, 2014
After having a few family members die over the last year, I found the scenes of Prince Andrei's death are really moving. They seemed very human, and almost undramatized.
Noted on February 17, 2014
Pierre's insanity consisted in the fact that he did not wait, as before, for personal reasons, which he called people's merits, in order to love them, but love overflowed his heart, and, loving people without reason, he discovered the unquestionable reasons for which it was worth loving them.
Quoted on February 17, 2014
Yakov Alpatych did not insist further. He had been managing peasants for a long time and knew that the main means of getting people to obey consisted in not showing them any suspicion that they might not obey.
Quoted on February 17, 2014
A good commander not only does not need genius or any special qualities, but, on the contrary, he needs the absence of the best and highest human qualities - love, poetry, tenderness, a searching philosophical doubt. He should be limited, firmly convinced that what he is doing is very important (otherwise he would not have patience enough), and only then will he be a brave commander. God forbid he should be a human being and come to love or pity someone, or start thinking about what is just and what isn't.
Quoted on February 17, 2014
It would have been possible to find a better location, but Marshal Davout was one of those people who deliberately set themselves up in the most gloomy conditions of life, so as to have the right to be gloomy.
Quoted on February 17, 2014
When an apple ripens and falls - what makes it fall? Is it that it is attracted to the ground, is it that the stem withers, is it that the sun has dried it up, that it has grown heavier, that the wind shakes it, that the boy standing underneath wants to eat it?
Quoted on February 17, 2014
I'm convinced that the Russians must either die or conquer,' he said, aware himself, as the others were, once the word had been spoken, that it was too rapturous and pompous for the present occasion and therefore awkward.
Quoted on September 28, 2011
He could not simply tell them that they all set off at a trot, he fell off his horse, dislocated his arm, and ran to the woods as fast as he could to escape a Frenchman. Besides, in order to tell everything as it had been, one would have to make an effort with oneself so as to tell only what had been. To tell the truth is very difficult, and young men are rarely capable of it.
Quoted on September 28, 2011
A secret voice tells us that we should feel guilty for being idle. If man could find a condition in which, while idle, he felt that he was being useful and was fulfilling his duty, he would have found one side of primordial blessedness. And this state of obligatory and irreproachable idleness is enjoyed by an entire class--the military.
Quoted on September 28, 2011
The German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth- science- which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known.
Quoted on September 28, 2011