Almost Every Way of Being Happy in War and Peace

For my wife and Russian Book Club

1. Happiness
The height of happiness
Perfect happiness
Quietly happy
Tranquil and happy
Flushed and happy
Happy and agitated
Shy but happy
Frightened and happy
Frightened yet happy and enraptured
So particularly animated and happy
Hope of happiness
A happy and tranquil mind
A softened, happy, timid look
A feeling of happiness seized him
A happiness he had long forgotten
A happy feeling of regeneration
A readiness to fall in love and an expectation of happiness
A happy thing
An expression of carefree happiness on the faces of both father and daughter
The possibility of love and happiness
This strange, unexpected happiness
Happy, rapturous excitement
Shamefaced and happy confusion
Great achievement and great happiness
How happy they would be
Strong, happy, and loved
Loveliness, happiness and peace
Memories, interpretations, and happy meditations
Happy plans for the future
He got into bed, happy and agitated but free from hesitation or indecision
He began to doze. Suddenly a feeling of happiness seized him
The complete, joyous sense of freedom which constituted his happiness at this time

2. Faces
Guilty, happy faces
Pale but happy faces
Happy, rapturous faces
Happy, exhausted faces
Her face beamed with ecstatic happiness
Her face was calm, gentle, and happy
Flushed faces, looking cheerful and happy
Galloping up with congratulations and happy faces
The child’s round happy little face
His ruddy, happy face, covered with hoarfrost
A happy look of resignation to the will of God on her face
A frightened happy face ready for rapture
The red, broad, and happy though uneasy face
The old mustached officer, with happy face and sparkling eyes
Wide-open happy eyes
Bright and happy eyes
Those eyes, filled with happy tears
Gentle, happy tears
A happy look on her face and a string of pearls round her thick red neck

3. Smiles
A happy smile
Happy and smiling
A quiet, happy smile
A smile on his pale emaciated face and a particularly happy light in his eyes
A happy rapturous smile dimpled her cheeks
A happy and kindly smile
A happy, grateful, childlike smile
An unconsciously happy smile
Tousled hair and a happy smile new to Sonya
The same happy smile as then when he had looked into her eyes
The happy complacent smile that slightly puckered his lips
Her kindly, slightly quizzical, happy smile
Her spontaneous, happy, ringing laughter
Her downy lip rose and remained lifted in childlike happiness
He often surprised those he met by his significantly happy looks and smiles which seemed to express a secret understanding between him and them
Smiling young faces (smiling probably at their own happiness)
Smiled as a rich man with millions in hand might smile at a poor fellow who told him that he, poor man, had not the five rubles that would make him happy

4. Types
That happy mood
That happy moment
That happy day in inactivity
That curious expression of inner, happy calm peculiar to pregnant women
That gay brotherly cordiality which goodhearted young people show to everyone when they are happy
The air of a happy conqueror who has attained the object of his desires
The happy air of a schoolboy called up before a large audience for an examination in which he feels sure he will distinguish himself.
The feelings of a man who has at length begun to attain a long-desired happiness
The concentrated and happy resolution you see on the face of a man who on a hot day takes a final run before plunging into the water
The happy smile seen on the faces of young men who have been under fire for the first time
That latent grudge a mother always has in regard to a daughter’s future married happiness
Natasha rose and went out of the room on tiptoe, like a ballet dancer, but smiling as only happy girls of fifteen can smile.

5. Exclamations
“It cannot be! How happy I am! But it can’t be. How happy I am! No, it can’t be!”
“Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here,” said the spirit of the place
“How was it I didn’t see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last! Yes!”
“He said one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and now I do believe in it. Let the dead bury their dead, but while one has life one must live and be happy!”
“I should die of happiness!”
“Oh, I am so happy!”
“Oh dear! How happy it all was!”
“If you only knew how happy I am!”
“Only remember that your life’s happiness depends on your decision. Never mind me!”
“How happy I am now, and how happy I may be with such a friend and such a husband!”

6. Thoughts
“As there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom”
“Yes, a new happiness was revealed to me of which man cannot be deprived,” he thought as he lay in the semi-darkness of the quiet hut, gazing fixedly before him with feverish wide open eyes. “A happiness lying beyond material forces, outside the material influences that act on man—a happiness of the soul alone, the happiness of loving”
“I should never, never have believed that one could be so happy,” she whispered to herself.
“I’m happy and I love everybody”
“While one has life one must live and be happy”
“Life is but for a moment and is a probation; yet we cling to it and think to find happiness in it”
“This happiness is not for you,” some inner voice whispered to him. “This happiness is for those who have not in them what there is in you”
“In myself alone and in that sunshine there is so much happiness”
“It seems to me that animal happiness is the only happiness possible”
“My love has no aim but the happiness of those I love”
“As if that money could add a hair’s breadth to happiness or peace of mind”
“Do you know?” said Pierre, as if suddenly struck by a happy thought, “I”ve been thinking: Leading such a life I can’t decide or think properly about anything. One’s head aches, and one spends all one’s money”
“I know that I shall never again be as happy and tranquil as I am now”
“This tree had been in the middle of the line that had seemed so terrible—and now he had crossed that line and not only was there nothing terrible, but everything was becoming more and more happy and animated”
“All nonsense! One might kill and rob and yet be happy”
Above all he knew that he himself was bright and happy
Thoughts of a life free from the fear of her father, and even the possibility of love and of family happiness, floated continually in her imagination like temptations of the devil
Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity
The more experience and observation she had of life, the greater was her wonder at the short-sightedness of men who seek enjoyment and happiness here on earth: toiling, suffering, struggling, and harming one another, to obtain that impossible, visionary, sinful happiness
The absence of suffering, the satisfaction of one’s needs and consequent freedom in the choice of one’s occupation, that is, of one’s way of life, now seemed to Pierre to be indubitably man’s highest happiness
The happiness before him appeared so inconceivable that if only he could attain it, it would be the end of all things.
He now experienced a glad consciousness that everything that constitutes men’s happiness—the comforts of life, wealth, even life itself—is rubbish it is pleasant to throw away, compared with something… With what?
He remembered that he had now a new source of happiness
Everybody seemed to him to be occupied with one thing only—his future happiness. Sometimes it seemed that other people were all as pleased as he was himself and merely tried to hide that pleasure by pretending to be busy with other interests. In every word and gesture he saw allusions to his happiness. He often surprised those he met by his significantly happy looks and smiles which seemed to express a secret understanding between him and them. And when he realized that people might not be aware of his happiness, he pitied them

7. Feeling
Natasha experienced a feeling new to her, a sense of the possibility of correcting her faults, the possibility of a new, clean life, and of happiness
His nurse sang him to sleep and he, burying his head in the pillow, felt happy in the mere consciousness of life—returned to his memory, not merely as something past but as something present
Pierre sometimes felt as if he was vanishing and that neither he nor she existed any longer, that nothing existed but happiness
He felt as though he were the center of some important and general movement; that something was constantly expected of him, that if he did not do it he would grieve and disappoint many people, but if he did this and that, all would be well; and he did what was demanded of him, but still that happy result always remained in the future
He felt like weeping childlike, kindly, and almost happy tears
One single sentiment, that of fear for his young and happy life, possessed his whole being
Rostov was very happy in the love they showed him, but the first moment of meeting had been so beatific that his present joy seemed insufficient, and he kept expecting something more, more and yet more

8. Love
She exhaled happiness and love
She knew that she loved for the first and only time in her life and felt that she was beloved, and was happy
They sat a long time talking of their happiness
Ecstatic pity and love for that man overflowed his happy heart
He cast happy, sidelong glances at his son from under his thick, bushy eyebrows.
Sometimes when she recalled his looks, his sympathy, and his words, happiness did not appear impossible to her
She was also happy because she had someone to adore her
The scenes of happiness with him she had so often repeated in her imagination
Nicholas could not wish for a better wife: by marrying her he would make the countess his mother happy, would be able to put his father’s affairs in order, and would even—he felt it—ensure Princess Maria’s happiness.
She could not help loving her as the one chosen by her brother, for whose happiness she was ready to sacrifice everything
A husband, a man, a strong dominant and strangely attractive being rose in her imagination, and carried her into a totally different happy world of his own.
It seemed as if the very light of the candles was focused on those two happy faces alone.
The evening before, in the first happy moment of meeting, they had kissed each other, but today they felt it could not be done; he felt that everybody, including his mother and sisters, was looking inquiringly at him
Natasha laughed at every word he said or that she said herself, not because what they were saying was amusing, but because she felt happy and was unable to control her joy which expressed itself by laughter
“And what nonsense all this is that I am saying!” a diplomat thought, glancing at the happy faces of the lovers. “That’s happiness!”
“Yes, that was happiness,” she then said in her quiet voice with its deep chest notes. “For me it certainly was happiness”
“I ask you to make me happy in a year, but you are free”
“While there is life there is happiness. There is much, much before us”

9. One Another
“Kind and noble beings able to find happiness in life—not merely harming no one but necessary to the happiness of others”
She wished to help him, to bestow on him the superabundance of her own happiness
But this happiness on one side of her spiritual nature did not prevent her feeling grief for her brother with full force
She prayed to God to forgive them all, and her too, and to give them all, and her too, peace and happiness
“No, I am too happy now to spoil my enjoyment by sympathy with anyone’s sorrow,” she felt, and she said to herself: “No, I must be mistaken, he must be feeling happy, just as I am”
“Besides your pleasure there is such a thing as other people’s happiness and peace”
“I shall be so happy when she is his wife. She is so unfortunate, a stranger, alone, helpless!”
“I tell myself that half my life and half my happiness are wrapped up in you”
“My vocation is to be happy with another kind of happiness, the happiness of love and self-sacrifice. And cost what it may, I will arrange poor Amélie’s happiness”
“We have no right to punish. And then you will know the happiness of forgiving”
The day was so beautiful, the sun so bright, everything around so gay, but that slim pretty girl did not know, or wish to know, of his existence and was contented and cheerful in her own separate—probably foolish—but bright and happy life
She was tormented by jealousy of her daughter’s happiness
“You lived for yourself and say you nearly ruined your life and only found happiness when you began living for others. I experienced just the reverse”

10. Irony
It was as if Napoleon knew that it was only necessary for his hand to deign to touch that soldier’s breast for the soldier to be forever happy, rewarded, and distinguished from everyone else in the world
Six weeks later he was married, and settled in Count Bezukhov’s large, newly furnished Petersburg house, the happy possessor, as people said, of a wife who was a celebrated beauty and of millions of money
The impossibility and above all the uselessness of freeing the serfs, who were quite happy as it was
His tongue he blew a small round ring of tobacco smoke, perfectly embodying his dream of happiness
Anatole, who was as handsome at close quarters as at a distance, sat down beside her and told her he had long wished to have this happiness
In Siberia they lead the same animal life, and the stripes on their bodies heal, and they are happy as before
In Natasha’s eyes all the people at the ball alike were good, kind, and splendid people, loving one another; none of them capable of injuring another—and so they ought all to be happy
Napoleon in exile was drawing up childish and mendacious plans of how he would have made mankind happy had he retained power

11. Unhappiness
She felt unhappy
A smile lit up her face but at the same time she sighed, and her deep eyes expressed a quiet sadness as though she felt, through her happiness, that there is another sort of happiness unattainable in this life and of which she involuntarily thought at that instant
He felt happy and at the same time sad. He had absolutely nothing to weep about yet he was ready to weep. What about?
Happy as Petya was, he felt sad at having to go home knowing that all the enjoyment of that day was over
Natasha’s face, which had been so radiantly happy all that saint’s day, suddenly changed: her eyes became fixed, and then a shiver passed down her broad neck and the corners of her mouth drooped.
On returning to the old conditions of life amid which he had been happy, weariness of life overcame him with its former intensity
The surroundings in which he had been happy became trying to him
He could not conceive that a stupid chance, letting the seven be dealt to the right rather than to the left, might deprive him of all this happiness, newly appreciated and newly illumined, and plunge him into the depths of unknown and undefined misery
The man who had ruined his own happiness
She was far less tranquil and happy than before
That air of escaping from the ills of life with which unhappy people look at their work
Her maternal instinct told her that Natasha had too much of something, and that because of this she would not be happy
She began to think she would never live to see such happiness
He had appeared to be a kindhearted but unhappy man
Her mind was so full of the question why she alone was granted so little happiness in life, that in a fit of absent-mindedness she sat still
“How happy I am, and how unhappy!”
“I have had so little happiness in life that every loss is hard for me to bear”
“Spring, love, happiness!” this oak seemed to say. “Are you not weary of that stupid, meaningless, constantly repeated fraud? Always the same and always a fraud? There is no spring, no sun, no happiness!”
“If you want to know whether I am happy? No! Is she happy? No! But why this is so I don’t know”
“I was so happy, so free, so lighthearted! And I did not realize how happy I was! When did that end and when did this new, terrible state of things begin?”
“How can she sing? There’s nothing to be happy about!” he thought
“You are unhappy, my dear sir,” the stranger continued
“Yes, yes, I am unhappy,” assented Pierre. “But what am I to do?”
“You have no idea how unhappy, how lonely, I feel when you are like that”
This unpleasant impression merely flitted over the young and happy face of the Emperor like a cloud of haze across a clear sky and vanished
The last happy event in the family

Epilogue: Joy
Rapturous joy
Awe and joy
Sobbing with joy
Joy and triumph
Joy and terror
Joy and sorrow
Joys and consolations
Joyful and solemn
Joyful and superstitious
Joy, hope, light
Joy, agitation, and embarrassment
A strange and joyous lightness of existence
A strange world completely alien to him and brimful of joys unknown to him
A joyful sense of comfort, regeneration, and return to life
A painfully joyous emotion
A joyous but oppressive feeling
A smile at the joy of life
A joyous, self-satisfied, youthful, and constant smile of animation
A joyful, pleasant smile, as if it were obvious to him that his success must always be the chief desire of everyone else
A superfluity of the comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying one’s needs
An unreasoning springtime feeling of joy and renewal
The egotism of joy
The joy of love
The joy of living
The best joys of his life
The joyful significance of that wail
The joyful feeling of a boy escaping from school
The holiday tone of joyousness
The joy and relief a tired man feels on lying down to rest
The joy, hitherto unknown to him, of believing in the possibility of attaining perfection
Irrecoverable, strong, joyful
Deafeningly, continuously, and joyfully
Inhaled the air with joy
Breathless with joy
Repressing her joy
Joyful delight and brotherly love
Something joyful and mysterious
Joyful that the moment had come
Timidly, compassionately, and with joyous love
Brighter, more joyful, more significant, and more festive
More hugging, more kissing, more outcries, and tears of joy
Transparently radiant with impulsive joy
Screamed joyously, ecstatically, and so piercingly that it set everyone’s ear tingling
Tears of joy choked him so that he could not speak
Something stood sentinel within her and forbade her every joy
“Now fuller, more joyful. Still more and more joyful!”
“Why do I strive, why do I toil in this narrow, confined frame, when life, all life with all its joys, is open to me?”
Dimly but joyfully filled not by the story itself but by its mysterious significance—by the rapturous joy that lit up the storyteller’s face as he told it, and the mystic significance of that joy
In spite of his evident wish to do so he could not give them a joyous and glad sparkle
His soul was as fresh and joyful as if he had stepped out of a stuffy room
But pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy
Prepared for the height of joy or misery



Thanks to Leo Tolstoy, the Maudes and Russian Book Club
Pickle Pauper Piper Paper Press
M.J.A.
2024