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[...] Napoleon, the genius of world history, failed in battle; but the amateur, unheroic blunderers, Nikolai and Pierre, survived into peace, surrounded by women, who do not understand warfare, and by children, who must not. To live, writes the poet Yehuda Amichai, is to build a ship and a harbour …

[...] when he finally has the chance to cut down a Frenchman, he cannot do it, because the soldier's face is not that of an enemy but 'a most simple, homelike face'. He gets a medal and is even called a hero, but can only think: 'So that's all there is to so-called heroism?' [...]

[...] Moses, speaking on behalf of the Lord, threatens a hell in which the Israelites will not even be competent slaves:

[...] and you will put yourselves up for sale there to your enemies as male slaves and slavegirls, and there will be no buyer.

[...] Abraham's gesture, of raising the eyes, though a formulaic one in biblical narrative, takes on here a great power of dread, as if Abraham can hardly bear to look upon the chosen site. Kierkegaard's inspired, appalled rewriting of this scene in Fear and Trembling emphasises its unspeakabilit…