- Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: I needn't have gone away.
- Natasha Rostova: Your father wanted it.
- Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: I shouldn't have agreed. It was pride. An absurd image in my mind of what love should be.
- Natasha Rostova: And what should it be?
- Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: Oh... You should set no tests or examinations. And that's what I was doing. You'll have had to measure up to some romantic notion I had.
- Count Rostov: Oh, my love, you make too many plans.
- Countess Rostova: Well, a mother must. So many go astray.
- Pierre Bezukhov: I've never really known what my life was. I searched everywhere for it. What was I looking for? Peace of mind? Inner harmony? I tried everything: freemasonry, dissipation, philanthropy, love, romantic love... And I found nothing. Nothing. I learned nothing, to be cruel, about those ordinary soldiers hurt at the field of Borodino. Till I came here. This is the last place on earth I would have looked for it.
- Pierre Bezukhov: You can think too much about life. In a strange way this interferes with the living of it.
- 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.
- Countess Rostova: I wish they'd take him to a hospital.
- Count Rostov: He won't get any better care than he's getting here.
- Countess Rostova: It'd be better for her. She shouldn't have to nurse him.
- Count Rostov: But she wants to.
- Countess Rostova: She's too young. She's not strong enough. Supposing he dies in her arms. Is that a nice thing for a young girl to experience?
- Pierre Bezukhov: It's self-consciousness, you see, Platon, that ruins us. Self-consciousness. It's that consciousness of oneself that separates us from life, from the scheme of things. And also it makes us painfully aware that we're not part of them. See how that dog doesn't have self-consciousness, does it? In a way, neither do you, really.
- French Corporal: Better to be a dog at a time like this, eh?
- Pierre Bezukhov: No. No, it's better to be a man. Even at a time like this.
- French Corporal: Oh, I don't know. When he gets fed. People play with him. He doesn't know what's going on. No, no, a dog's life is better, I think.
- Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: Love? What is love? Love hinders death. Love is life. All is bound up in love alone. Love is God. And to die means that I, a tiny particle of love, shall return to the universal and eternal source.
- Count Rostov: I wouldn't have thought Sonya would be so devious.
- Countess Rostova: Why not? Any woman would.
- 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.
- Natasha Rostova: Mama, where's my New Testament?
- Countess Rostova: In your bedroom, probably. Why?
- Natasha Rostova: Andrei wants to keep it near him. Mama, you don't...
- Countess Rostova: No no no no. People don't only want the New Testament when they're dying.
- Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: Yes, it must seem sad to them. But how simple it is. They would interpret it their way. But they don't understand. I shall die. Well, what of it? I chose death. All my life, I chose death.
- Pierre Bezukhov: Life! Life is the minute-by-minute living of it. That's all, isn't it? And loving all things.
- 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.