Fyodor Dostoevsky
You cannot imagine what sorrow and anger seize one's whole soul when a great idea, which one has long and piously revered, is picked up by some bunglers and dragged into the street, to more fools like themselves, and one suddenly meets it in the flea market, unrecognizable, dirty, askew, absurdly presented, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid children.Collection: Children
Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.Collection: Men
My life is ending, I know that well, but every day that is left me I feel how my earthly life is in touch with a new infinite, unknown, but approaching life, the nearness of which sets my soul quivering with rapture, my mind glowing and my heart weeping with joy.Collection: Heart
Talking nonsense is man's only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms.Collection: Men
And if there's love, you can do without happiness too. Even with sorrow, life is sweet.Collection: Sweet
I don't need money, or, better, it's not money that I need; it's not even power; I need only what is obtained by power and simply cannot be obtained without power: the solitary and calm awareness of strength! That is the fullest definition of freedom, which the world so struggles over!Collection: Struggle
For broad understanding and deep feeling, you need pain and suffering.Collection: Pain
A single day is sufficient for a man to discover what happiness is.Collection: Men
A new philosophy, a new way of life, is not given for nothing. It has to be paid dearly for and only acquired with much patience and great effortCollection: Philosophy
May you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of one's life?Collection: Lonely
I tell you, the old-fashioned doctor who treated all diseases has completely disappeared, now there are only specialists, and they advertise all the time in the newspapers. If your nose hurts, they send you to Paris: there's a European specialist there, he treats noses. You go to Paris, he examines your nose: I can treat only your right nostril, he says, I don't treat left nostrils, it's not my specialty, but after me, go to Vienna, there's a separate specialist there who will finish treating your left nostril.Collection: Hurt
Perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything.Collection: Intelligent
Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.Collection: Truth
Let us be servants in order to be leaders.Collection: Faith
If you love all things, you will also attain the divine mystery that is in all things. For then your ability to perceive the truth will grow every day, and your mind will open itself to an all-embracing loveCollection: Love
Break what must be broken, once for all, that's all, and take the suffering on oneself.Collection: Broken
A just cause is not ruined by a few mistakes.Collection: Mistake
They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?Collection: Dream
I cannot truly imagine a truly great person who hasn't suffered.Collection: Imagine
There is no virtue if there is no immortality.Collection: Virtue
You must accept it as it is, and hence accept all consequences. A wall is indeed a wall.Collection: Wall
The Russian soul is a dark place.Collection: Dark
Love the animals. God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Don't trouble it, don't harass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent.Collection: Animal
Because I'm a Karamazov. Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I'm even pleased that I'm falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful.Collection: Beautiful
Generally speaking, our prisoners were capable of loving animals, and if they had been allowed they would have delighted to rear large numbers of domestic animals and birds in the prison. And I wonder what other activity could better have softened and refined their harsh and brutal natures than this. But it was not allowed. Neither the regulations nor the nature of the prison made it possible.Collection: Animal
Human laziness makes people pigeonhole one another at first site so that they find nothing in common with one another.Collection: People
I wanted to fathom her secrets; I wanted her to come to me and say: "I love you," and if not that, if that was senseless insanity, then...well, what was there to care about? Did I know what I wanted? I was like one demented: all I wanted was to be near her, in the halo of her glory, in her radiance, always, for ever, all my life. I knew nothing more!Collection: Love You
... the more I learned, the more conscious did I become of the fact that I was ridiculous. So that for me my years of hard work at the university seem in the end to have existed for the sole purpose of demonstrating and proving to me, the more deeply engrossed I became in my studies, that I was an utterly absurd personCollection: Hard Work
Lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth.Collection: Inspirational
My feelings, gratitude, for instance, are denied me simply because of my social position.Collection: Gratitude
Homeopathic doses are perhaps the strongest.Collection: Homeopathy
If he's honest, he'll steal; if he's human, he'll murder; if he's faithful, he'll deceive.Collection: Lying
On our earth we can only love withsuffering and through suffering.Collection: Life
It is man's unique privilege, among all other organisms. By pursuing falsehood you will arrive at the truth!Collection: Unique
I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote and infinite time and space, but here on Earth...I want to see with my own eyes the lamb lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been about. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer.Collection: Lying
Schoolboys are a merciless race, individually they are angels, but together, especially in schools, they are often merciless.Collection: School
As soon as any one is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he's too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.Collection: Hate
Life [had] replaced logic.Collection: Logic
And do you know, do you know that mankind can live without the Englishman, it can live without Germany, it can live only too well without the Russian man, it can live without science, without bread, and it only cannot live without beauty, for then there would be nothing at all to do in the world! The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here. Science itself would not stand for a minute without beautyCollection: Men
Though I do not believe in the order of things, still the sticky little leaves that come out in the spring are dear to me, the blue sky is dear to me, some people are dear to me, whom one loves sometimes, would you believe it, without even knowing why; some human deeds are dear to me, which one has perhaps long ceased believing in, but still honors with one's heart, out of old habit..." --Ivan KaramazovCollection: Spring
Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm humanCollection: Talking
There is no idea, no fact, which could not be vulgarized and presented in a ludicrous light.Collection: Light
If you happen to have a wart on your nose or forehead, you cannot help imagining that no one in the world has anything else to do but stare at your wart, laugh at it, and condemn you for it, even though you have discovered America.Collection: America
Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. If anyone finds out he'll become happy at once.Collection: Happiness
We are born dead, and we are becoming more and more contented with our condition. We are acquiring the taste for it.Collection: Fear
The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the miraculous also.Collection: Miracle
If it were considered desirable to destroy a human being, the only thing necessary would be to give his work a character of uselessnessCollection: Inspiration
Alyosha's heart could not bear uncertainty, for the nature of his love was always active. He could not love passively; once he loved, he immediately also began to help.Collection: Heart
Existence alone had never been enough for him; he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was only from the force of his desires that he had regarded himself as a man to whom more was permitted than to others.Collection: Men