War and Peace

We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.

Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.

If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.

The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.

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...

Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy.

You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.

It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.

If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.

We are asleep until we fall in Love!

I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.

Everything I know, I know because of love.

Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid.

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...

How can one be well...when one suffers morally?

Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it.

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.

Life did not stop, and one had to live.

Kings are the slaves of history.

A Frenchman's self-assurance stems from his belief that he is mentally and physically irresistibly fascinating to both men and women. An Englishman's self-assurance is founded on his being a citizen of the best organized state in the world and on the fact that, as an Englishman, he always knows what to do, and that whatever he does as an Englishman is unquestionably correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets. A Russian is self-assured simply because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe in the possibility of knowing anything fully.

Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.

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.

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 and sleep.

In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning.

One must be cunning and wicked in this world.