[...] 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?' [...]

[...] 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 at the same time: 'And to finish the harbour / long after the ship has gone down.'