- [first lines]
- Narrator: All ideas that have momentous consequences are always simple. My idea is that if evil men are linked with one another and are thereby made strong, then honest men, too, must do likewise. It's as simple as that.
- Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: How quiet, peaceful. How majestic. How different from all the running, shouting, and fighting. How is it I never noticed that glorious sky before? How happy I am that I have seen it at last. Yes, all is vanity. All is false except for that endless sky. Nothing exists but the sky. And even the sky does not exist. There is nothing...
- Pricess Lisa Bolkonskaya: Why cannot men do without war? How is it we women are content with things as they are?
- Natasha Rostova: Do you ever feel as if there were nothing more to come? Nothing. Everything good has already happened. Doesn't it make you sad?
- Field Marshal Kutuzov: Brothers, I know it's hard on you. But there's nothing we can do. Be patient. It will soon be over. We'll see our guests out, and then we shall rest. It's hard on you, but you're at home. But for them? You see what they've come to. Worse than the lowliest beggars. When they were strong, we didn't spare ourselves. But now, we can spare them. They're human beings too. Right, lads? But after all is said and done, who asked them to come here? It serves them right to have their snouts pushed into the mud.
- Narrator: On 12th June, 1812, the forces of western Europe crossed the frontiers of Russia and war began. In other words, an event took place that was contrary to all human reason and human nature.
- [Prince Andrei is dying]
- Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: Natasha... I love you too much. More than anything in the world.
- Natasha Rostova: And I! But why too much?
- Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: Why too much? Well, what do you think? What do you feel in your soul, deep in your soul? Shall I live? What do you think?
- Natasha Rostova: I'm sure of it.
- Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: How good that would be.
- Narrator: And not for this day and hour alone were the mind and conscience of this man darkened, on whom the burden of events weighed more heavily than on all the others who took part in it. Never, to the end of his life, had he the least comprehension of goodness, of beauty or of truth, or of the significance of his actions, which were too contrary to goodness and truth, too remote from everything human for him ever to understand their meaning. He could not disavow his deeds, lauded as they were by half the world, and so he was obliged to renounce truth and goodness and all humanity.
- [last lines]
- Narrator: And I say, let us take one another's hand, all people who cherish goodness, and let there be only one banner - that of active virtue. I mean to say only that all ideas that have momentous consequences are always simple. My idea is that if evil men are linked with one another and are thereby made strong, then honest men, too, must do likewise. It's as simple as that.
- [the Battle of Borodino drags on]
- Narrator: Enough, enough, men. Stop, consider, what are you doing? Into the minds of tired and hungry men on both sides, a flicker of doubt began to creep. Were they to go on slaughtering one another? Kill whom you like, do what you like, but I've had enough. Yet some inexplicable, mysterious power continued to control them, and the terrible business went on, carried out not by the will of individual men.
- Narrator: A moral victory which compels the enemy to recognize the moral superiority of his opponent and his own impotence was won by the Russians at Borodino. The direct consequence of the Battle of Borodino was Napoleon's flight from Moscow, the destruction of the invading army of 500,000 men, and the destruction of Napoleonic France, on which was laid for the first time, at Borodino, the hand of an opponent stronger in spirit!
- Platon Karataev: Well, though it's the worm that gnaws the cabbage, it's first to die.
- Pierre Bezukhov: What was that you said?
- Platon Karataev: I say it's not by our wit, but as God thinks fit.
- Platon Karataev: Well, though it's the worm that gnaws the cabbage, it's first to die.
- Tushin: What was that you said?
- Platon Karataev: I say it's not by our wit, but as God thinks fit.
- Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky: He was killed in a battle in which Russia's finest men were massacred along with Russia's glory. Go and tell Lise.
- Hélène Bezukhova: Why did you believe that he was my lover? Because I enjoy being with him? If you were nicer and more clever, I might enjoy being with you.
- Pierre Bezukhov: Don't speak to me. I beg you.
- Hélène Bezukhova: Why shouldn't I speak? It's a rare woman that wouldn't have taken a lover, with a husband like you.
- Pierre Bezukhov: It is wrong to do evil to another human being.
- Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: How do you know what will do harm to another man? I know only two evils in life: a bad conscience and a sick body. Happiness consists in their absence. One must live for oneself, avoiding these two evils. That is my philosophy now.
- Pierre Bezukhov: How is it possible to live only for oneself? No! A thousand times no! I feel, deep within my soul, I am an integral part of a vast whole. I feel I cannot vanish without a trace. Nothing vanishes! I always have existed and always will.
- Natasha Rostova: Sonya, how can anyone sleep? See how lovely it is. How wonderful the world is! Wake up, Sonya! There never has been a night like this. Look at the moon. How simply perfect. Come here, my dear. Come. Do you see?
- Natasha Rostova: Do you think he's very much in love? Was anybody ever in love with you like that? And he's very nice. Very, very nice. But he's not quite to my taste. He's so narrow, like the dining-room clock.
- Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: No! My life is not over at the age of 31. It is not enough for me to know all that is inside me.
- Pierre Bezukhov: Amuse yourself with women like my wife. There, you're within your rights. They know what you want of them. They are armed against you by the same experience of debauchery. But to promise an innocent girl to marry her - to deceive, to abduct her. Don't you understand that's as despicable as beating an old woman or a child?
- Anatol Kuragin: I don't know about that.
- Anatol Kuragin: You don't know what I'm going through.
- [places his friends hand on his heart]
- Anatol Kuragin: Feel how it's beating! What little feet! What eyes! A goddess!
- Natasha Rostova: Stop laughing. You're shaking the bed. You're awfully like me, just such a another giggler!
- Natasha Rostova: There is today, there is tomorrow, there is eternity. And there was yesterday and the day before.
- Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: I want everyone to know me so that my life is not to be lived for myself alone. It must cast its reflection upon the lives of others so that we may live in harmony.
- Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: War is not about decency. It is the lowest thing men stoop to. One must realize and not make a game out of war. War is a dreadful necessity. Cast off the lies and see war as war. It is no game. Men come together, like they will tomorrow, to murder one another. They will kill each other, maim thousands upon thousands and then hold sacred services and offer up their prayers for having killed so many human beings. And they'll exaggerate it in the retelling and embellish the victory. The side that kills the most people wins the most honors. Whoever succeeds in killing the most people gets the greatest rewards. How can God bear to witness such things?
- Rambal: You are fine enemies, though. Fine men. Our king of Naples knows good men, and he cried, "Bravo! Soldiers, like ourselves!"
- Pierre Bezukhov: Paris is the capital of the world.
- Rambal: A man who doesn't know Paris is simply a barbarian.
- Pierre Bezukhov: Who is it that is punishing me, killing me, taking my life with all my memories, my strivings, my thoughts? Who is doing it? Who then is doing this? They all suffer as I do. Who then? Who then is doing it? No one. It is the course of things, the way things work out.
- Platon Karataev: How can one not be miserable? Moscow is the mother of cities. How can you not be sad looking at her?
- Platon Karataev: Have you seen a lot of trouble, sir? You mustn't worry, my friend. Endure it for an hour, live on for a century. That's how it is, dear man. That's how it is.
- Narrator: Not only did Prince Andrei know he was going to die, but he already felt like he was dying, that he was already half-dead. It was that last spiritual struggle between life and death in which death gains the victory. Neither impatient nor troubled, he lay waiting for what was before him... the menacing, the eternal, the unknown and remote.
- Pierre Bezukhov: The soldier wouldn't let me pass. They have caught me, shut me up. They keep me prisoner. Who, me? Me? Me! My immortal soul! All that there is is mine! And all that is in me. And all that is me!
- Pierre Bezukhov: That is life. That is Karatayev. He is absorbed and extinguished. It's all so simple and clear. How was it I did not know that before? Life is everything.
- Narrator: How horrible Pierre would have felt seven years earlier when he came home from abroad if someone had told him that there was no need for him to seek and plan, that his life's course had been predetermined. He would tell himself that the kind of life he was leading was only temporary. But then he was shocked by the thought of how many had begun that life, like himself, with all their teeth and hair and had ended it without a single tooth or hair. What for? Why? What was going on in the world? Pierre remembered he had heard that soldiers in war, if they've taken cover during bombardment and have nothing to do, try to keep themselves busy to overcome their fear. To Pierre, all men seemed to be such soldiers, seeking an escape from life. Some seek escape in ambition, some in cards, some in making laws, some in women, some in toys, some in horses, some in politics, some in hunting, some in wine, some in affairs of state. Nothing is trivial. Nothing is important. The only aim is to save oneself from life, to not face it... that dreadful life. But, after he'd been drinking, he told himself it didn't matter. 'I'll get it unraveled. I have the clue. I'll figure it out later.' But that 'later' never came.
- Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: The whole world is now divided in two. She is one half of it. Where she is, there is hope and light. The other half is where she is not. Darkness and gloom is there.
- Tsar Alexander I: Why don't you begin, Mikhail Illarionovich?
- Field Marshal Kutuzov: I am waiting, Your Majesty. I am waiting, Your Majesty. Not all the columns have formed up, Your Majesty.
- Tsar Alexander I: This is not a parade where they don't begin until all regiments arrive.
- Field Marshal Kutuzov: I do not begin precisely because this is not a parade nor at Tsaritsyn Field. But if Your Majesty orders it...
- Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: If she goes to her cousin first and then to another lady, then she will be my wife.
- Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: Pardon me. We will finish this conversation elsewhere. At a ball, one should dance.
- Natasha Rostova: Is it possible that this is me, that I am to be the wife, the equal of this strange, charming, intelligent man whom even my father looks up to? Is it true that I can no longer be frivolous? I'm grown up now. I must answer for my every deed and word.
- Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: You talk about Bonaparte and his career. When Bonaparte set out to accomplish his goals, he was free. He wanted nothing in life but these goals, and he achieved them. And here? Nothing but balls, gossip, receptions... all vanity! A vicious circle from which I cannot free myself.
- Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: Whatever happens, turn to Pierre for help and advice. He is absent-minded and comical, but he has a heart of gold.
- Natasha Rostova: Why ask? Why doubt what you cannot but know? Why speak when words cannot express what one feels?
- Anatol Kuragin: Since last night, my fate has been sealed... to be loved by you or die. There can be no other outcome.