War & Peace (TV Series)

Of Life and Death (1973)

Harry Locke: Platon Karatayev

Quotes 

• Pierre Bezukhov : Well, what do you make of it all, Platon? Here's Laurent. He doesn't want to be here. He'd rather be at home in France. We don't want them here. Yet here he is, with thousands of others.

  Platon Karatayev : Well, birds fly south in the winter, and from time to time, men want to be on the move.

• Platon Karatayev : Lay me down like a stone, O Lord, and raise me up like new bread.

• Platon Karatayev : A thinking man is seldom a happy one.

• Platon Karatayev : Slip out of this world for a little while, and who knows? May be a better place when you come back. You might even hear from someone you love. Who knows? All is possible.

• Platon Karatayev : Of course it's different for you. You're an educated man. You can't help wanting to know everything.

  Pierre Bezukhov : I think you know more than I will ever know.

  Platon Karatayev : Oh no no, sir, that's not true.

  Pierre Bezukhov : Yes, it is, it is true.

  Platon Karatayev : I can't even speak French. I can't even read.

  Pierre Bezukhov : No. But you know your place in the scheme of things. And I don't. At least I didn't until I came here.

• Pierre Bezukhov : Doesn't it mean anything to you that a... a boy like that was shot?

  Platon Karatayev : Oh, of course, of course. But there, on the other hand... Think of death, shorten life.

• Platon Karatayev : Trouble lasts but for an hour. Life goes on forever.

• Pierre Bezukhov : Do you know why I stayed in Moscow?

  Platon Karatayev : No.

  Pierre Bezukhov : I stayed in Moscow to assassinate Napoleon. I worked out abstruse calculations from the apocalypse, all in order to convince myself that I was the chosen one.

  Platon Karatayev : Oh, oh, that is funny, sir, but it don't seem like you.

  Pierre Bezukhov : No, it wasn't me. Any more than freemasonry is me, or philanthropy, or any of those other self-conscious activities.

• Platon Karatayev : Man proposes, God disposes.