Count Leo Tolstoy : War and Peace

ANDREW

You will die and all will end, You will die and know all, or cease asking.
But dying was also dreadful.
V.i

When you go hand in hand with someone and all at once that person vanishes there, into nowhere, and you yourself are left facing that abyss, and look in. And I have looked in....
V.xi-xii, on his wife's death

"They meet to murder one another ... and they announce a victory, supposing that the more people they have killed, the greater their achievement."
X.xxv, on people who treat war as a game

VERA

"In our days," continued Vera - mentioning 'our days' as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing, imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of 'our days' and that human characteristics change with the times...

PIERRE

To him all men seemed like soldiers, seeking refuge from life: some in ambition, cards, some in framing laws, some in women, some in toys, some in sport, some in horses, some in politics, some in wine, some in governmental affairs. "Nothing is trivial, and nothing is important, it's all the same - only to save oneself from it as best one can," thought Pierre. "Only not to see it, that dreadful it."
VIII.i

to the question "what for?", the answer: "because there is a God, that God without whose will not one hair falls from a man's head"
XV.xii, finally discovering 'that great inscrutible something'

OTHERS

'Uncle' sang as the peasants sing, with full voice and nieve conviction that the whole meaning of a song lies in the words, and that the tune comes of itself, and that apart from the words there is no tune, which exists only to give measure to the words. As a result of this the unconsidered tune, like the song of a bird, was extraordinarily good.
VII.vii

Clouds gathered and drops of rain began to fall on the dead and wounded, as if to say: "enough, men! Enough! Cease ... bethink yourselves! What are you doing?
X.xxxix

[those who died] are not to blame because other Russians, sitting in warm rooms, proposed that they should do what was impossible. All that strange contradiction... between the facts and the historical accounts, only arises because the historians... have written the history of the beautiful words and sentiments of various generals, and not the history of events.
XIV.xix

All [Kutuzov] said - that it was necessary to await supplies, or that the men had no boots - was so simple, while what they proposed was so complicated and clever, that it was evident that he was old and stupid and that they, though not in power, were commanders of genius.
XV.x

why do millions of Christian men professing the law of love of their fellow man slay one another?
2nd epilogue.i

That most powerful weapon of ignorance, the diffusion of printed matter
2nd epilogue.viii
(But see Martin Luther on printing stuff)

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