What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
I love mankind, he said, “but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.
To love someone means to see them as God intended them.
To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.
Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.
Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don’t say that you’ve wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.
You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won’t be wiser?
The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.
But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road- there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt.
Men are made for happiness, and he who is completely happy has the right to say to himself, ‘I am doing God’s will on earth.
You can’t skip over nature by logic. Logic presupposes three possibilities, but there are millions! Cut away a million, and reduce it all to the question of comfort! That’s the easiest solution to the problem!
If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.
The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!
Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled.
We degrade God too much, ascribing to him our ideas, in vexation at being unable to understand Him.
Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.
Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely.
It is man’s unique privilege, among all other organisms. By pursuing falsehood you will arrive at the truth!
originality and a feeling of one’s own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.
What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind-then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it’s all as it should be.
My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn’t that enough for a whole lifetime?
Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly.
Whatever distinguishes one lump of flesh from another when we’re alive, we’re all the same once we’re dead. Just used-up shells.
Believe to the end, even if all men went astray and you were left the only one faithful; bring your offering even then and praise God in your loneliness.
For if there’s no everlasting God, there’s no such thing as virtue, and there’s no need of it.
It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.
Instead of giving a firm foundation for setting the conscience of man at rest forever, Thou didst choose all that is exceptional, vague and enigmatic.
I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It’s not worth the tears of that one tortured child who…prayed..with…unexpiated tears to ‘dear,kind God!
Stupidity is brief and guileless, while wit equivocates and hides. Wit is a scoundrel, while stupidity is honest and sincere.
…everyone needs a somewhere, a place he can go. There comes a time, you see, inevitably there comes a time you have to have a somewhere you can go!
A drunken but exceedingly depressed German clown from Munich entertained the public.
. . . finally, I couldn’t imagine how I could live without books, and I stopped dreaming about marrying that Chinese prince. . . .
People really do like seeing their best friends humiliated; a large part of the friendship is based on humiliation; and that is an old truth,well known to all intelligent people.
Sorrow compressed my heart, and I felt I would die, and then . . . Well, then I woke up.
Why is it that when you awake to the world of realities you nearly always feel, sometimes very vividly, that the vanished dream has carried with it some enigma which you have failed to solve?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us.
For a woman, all resurrection, all salvation, from whatever perdition, lies in love; in fact, it is her only way to it.
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
The prince says that the world will be saved by beauty! And I maintain that the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love.
The need for beauty and the [artistic] creation which embodies it is inseparable from man, and without it man would possibly not want to live in the world.
It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.
He’s an intelligent man, but it takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.
Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.
Be near your brothers. Not just one, but both of them.
Drive nature out of the door and it will fly in at the window
Nature does not ask your permission, she has nothing to do with your wishes, and whether you like her laws or dislike them, you are bound to accept her as she is, and consequently all her conclusions.
Eh, brother, but nature has to be corrected and guided, otherwise we’d all drown in prejudices. Without that there wouldn’t be even a single great man.
How can one deceive these dear little birds, when they look at one so sweetly and confidingly? I call them birds because there is nothing in the world better than birds!
I was overpowered by the mere sensation of that dream and it alone survived in my sorely wounded heart.
What is most vile and despicable about money is that it even confers talent. And it will do so until the end of the world.
A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.
I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and we’re both unhappy, and we both suffer.
For though your mind is active enough, your heart is darkened with corruption, and without a pure heart there can be no full or genuine sensibility.
Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more.
Feeling my own humiliation in my heart like the sharp prick of a needle.
Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it … one must have the courage to dare.
Power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up.
It was more difficult not tounderstand than to understand.
Reality is infinitely diverse, compared with even the subtlest conclusions of abstract thought, and does not allow of clear-cut and sweeping distinctions. Reality resists classification.
Does it matter whether it was a dream or a reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?
Ah youth, youth! That’s what happens when you go steeping your soul into Shakespeare
Man is fond of reckoning up his troubles, but does not count his joys.
Grown-up people do not know that a child can give exceedingly good advice even in the most difficult case.
Love children especially, for they too are sinless like the angels; they live to soften and purify our hearts and, as it were, to guide us.
But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself.
Don’t be surprised that I value prejudice, observe certain conventions, seek power–it’s because I know I live in an empty society.
I believe he was feeling a bit nervous. Possibly it was my costume that took him aback. I was dressed quite well, even elegantly, and looked as if I belonged to the best society.
Try and set yourself the task not to think of a white bear, and the cursed thing comes to mind every minute.
Strength, strength is what I need; nothing can be done without strength; and strength must be gained by strength.
Bah! You want to hear the vilest thing a man’s done and you want him to be a hero at the same time!
We obtained literature by our own efforts, it is a product of our own life, and that is why we love it so much and hold it so dear, why we pin our hopes on it.
Can you blame me, my dear, for looking on this attachment as a romantic folly inspired by that cursed Shakespeare who will poke his nose where he is not wanted?
I worked it through with pride,I almost spoke without words, and i’m masterly at speaking without words.All my life I have spoken without words, and I have passed through whole tragedies on my own account without words
Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education.
The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.
You needn’t be afraid of life! Life is so good when you do something that is good and just.
What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning…
Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don’t want harmony. From love for humanity I don’t want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering.
Man only likes counting his grief, he doesn’t count his happiness. But if he were to count properly, he’d see that there’s enough of both lots for him.
A long while yet will you keep that great mother’s grief. But it will turn in the end into quiet joy, and your bitter tears will be only tears of tender sorrow that purifies the heart and delivers it from sin.
I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness- a real thorough-going illness.
You ache with it all; and the more mysterious it is, the more you ache.
All is in a man’s hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that’s an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most… .
Man is unhappy because he doesn’t know he’s happy. It’s only that.
Everything which is of use to mankind is honourable.
No man lives, can live, without having some object in view, and making efforts to attain that object. But when object there is none, and hope is entirely fled, anguish often turns a man into a monster.
This life you cry up so much is what I wanted to extinguish by suicide, whereas my dream, my dream—oh, it has revealed to me a great, new, regenerated intensity of life!
and what shall I have to dream of when I have been so happy in reality beside you!
How good life is when one does something good and just!
It is always so, when we are unhappy we feel more strongly the unhappiness of others; our feeling is not shattered, but becomes concentrated…
At that time I was only twenty-four years old. My life then was already gloomy, disorderly, and solitary to the point of savagery.
I was ready to leave with every load, with every worthy individual of respectable appearance hiring a cab; but absolutely nobody invited me, not one; it was as if they had forgotten me, as if I was actually something alien to them!
I invented adventures for myself and made up a life, so as at least to live in some way.
If one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely, to mete out to him the most terrible punishment … all one would have to do would be to make him do work that was completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning.
Do you know that I love now to recall and visit at certain dates the places where Iwas once happy in my own way? I love to build up my present in harmony with the irrevocable past…
Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.
Suffering is part and parcel of extensive intelligence and a feeling heart.
Break what must be broken, once for all, that’s all, and take the suffering on oneself.
Perhaps,” you will add, grinning, “those who have never been slapped will also not understand” – thereby politely hinting that I, too, may have experienced a slap in my life, and am therefore speaking as a connoisseur.
Suffering and pain are always obligatory for a broad consciousness and a deep heart. Truly great men I think, must feel great sorrow in this world.
Before it was just her infernal curves that fretted me, but now I’ve taken her whole soul into my soul, and through her I’ve become a man!
Because I couldn’t bear my burden and have come to throw it on another: you suffer too, and I shall feel better! And can you love such a mean wretch?
They suffer, of course… but then they live, they live a real life, not a fantastic one, for suffering is life. Without suffering what would be the pleasure of it?
Consciousness is man’s greatest misfortune, still I know that man loves it and will not exchange it for any satisfactions.
My sweetheart! When I think of you, it’s as if I’m holding some healing balm to my sick soul, and although i suffer for you, i find that even suffering for you is easy.
And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better – cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?
Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference.
It’s precisely in despair that you find the most intense pleasure, especially if you are already powerfully conscious of the hopelessness of your predicament.
Alexandra, my eldest, here, plays the piano, or reads or sews; Adelaida paints landscapes and portraits (but never finishes any); and Aglaya sits and does nothing. I don’t work too much, either.
I saw the truth, I saw and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the ability to live on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of people.
In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden-the demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain
Was it all put into words, or did both understand that they had the same thing at heart and in their minds, so that there was no need to speak of it aloud, and better not to speak of it?
Of course boredom may lead you to anything. It is boredom sets one sticking golden pins into people, but all that would not matter. What is bad (this is my comment again) is that I dare say people will be thankful for the gold pins then.
Too many riddles weigh men down on earth. We must solve as we can, and try to keep a dry skin in the water.
What a man need is simply and solely independence volition, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.
I swear to you that to think too much is a disease, a real, actual disease.
Loving someone is different from being in love with someone. You can hate someone you’re in love with
Education has nothing whatever to do with moral deterioration; and if one must admit that it develops a resolute spirit among the people, that is far from being a defect.
Rakitin was dishonest and was decidedly unaware of it; that, on the contrary, knowing that he wouldn’t steal money from the table, he ultimately considered himself a man of the highest integrity.
Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.
In wine is truth, and the truth had all come out, “that is, all the uncleanness of his coarse and envious heart”!
Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute.
But men love abstract reasoning and neat systematization so much that they think nothing of distorting the truth, closing their eyes and ears to contrary evidence to preserve their logical constructions.
I’m a master of speaking silently—all my life I’ve spoken silently and I’ve lived through entire tragedies in silence.
God has such gladness every time he sees from heaven that a sinner is praying to Him with all his heart, as a mother has when she sees the first smile on her baby’s face.
Oh, I have always been proud, I always wanted all or nothing! You see it was just because I am not one who will accept half a happiness, but always wanted all
…everything defiled and degraded. What cannot man live through! Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.
Everyone must look out for himself, and the best time is had by those who’re best able to decieve themselves.
A complete atheist stands on the next-to-last upper step to the most complete faith (he may or may not take that step), while the indifferent one has no faith, apart from a bad fear.
The monks used to say that he was more drawn to those who were more sinful, and the greater the sinner the more he loved him.
Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.
It is a law of nature that every decent man on earth is bound to be a coward and a slave
What’s most revolting is that one is really sad! No, it’s better at home. Here at least one blames others for everything and excuses oneself.
It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young, dear reader.
He was a sceptic, he was young, abstract, and therefore cruel.
I don’t like being with grown-up people. I’ve known that a long time. I don’t like it because I don’t know how to get on with them.
Well, sir, it is precisely my notion that one sees and learns most of all by observing our younger generations.
If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.
Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
Lunatics! Vain creatures! They don’t believe in God, they don’t believe in Christ! Why, you are so eaten up with pride and vanity that you’ll end up by eating one another, that’s what I prophesy.
The queen who mended her stockings in prison must have looked every inch a queen and even more a queen than at sumptuous banquets and levees.
I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness – a real thorough-going illness.
…there is no explaining anything by reasoning and so it is useless to reason.
It seems to me that the whole of human life can be summed up in the one statement that man only exists for the purpose of proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not an organ.
If I had had the power to prevent my own birth I should certainly never have consented to accept existence under such ridiculous conditions.
The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.
Crime? What crime? … My killing a loathsome, harmful louse, a filthy old moneylender woman … and you call that a crime?
(…)man holds the remedy in his own hands, and lets everything go its own way, simply through cowardice- that is an axiom.
Moreover, in order to understand any man one must be deliberate and careful to avoid forming prejudices and mistaken ideas, which are very difficult to correct and get over afterwards.
Because everyone is guilty for everyone else. For all the ‘wee ones,’ because there are little children and big children. All people are ‘wee ones.’ And I’ll go for all of them, because there must be someone who will go for all of them.
The sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of all sacrifices
And, beginning to grind his teeth again, Pyotr Petrovich admitted that he’d been a fool–but only to himself, of course.
He longed to revenge himself on everyone for his own unseemliness
I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.
Why I would sell the whole world for a single kopek, just so that nobody would bother me. Should the world go to hell, or should I go without my tea now? I’ll say let the world go to hell so long as I can have my tea whenever I want it.
Another circumstance, too, worried me in those days: that there was no one like me and I was unlike anyone else. “I am alone and they are everyone,” I thought–and pondered.
Nothing helps a man to reform like thinking of the past with regret.
Christ is with you. Do not abandon Him and He will not abandon you. You will see great sorrow, and in that sorrow you will be happy. This is my last message to you: in sorrow seek happiness. Work, work unceasingly.
During these three months I have gone through much; I mean, I have gone through much in myself; and now there are the things I am going to see and go through. There will be much to be written.
if [God] doesn’t exist, man is the chief of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God?
I did dream of it, chiefly because ‘all things are lawful.’ That was quite right what you taught me, for you talked a lot to me about that. For if there’s no everlasting God, there’s no such thing as virtue, and there’s no need of it.
People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.
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.
…but it is in despair that the most burning pleasures occur, especially when one is all too highly conscious of the hopelessness of one’s position.
…but it is in despair that the most burning pleasures occur…
Equality lies only in human moral dignity. … Let there be brothers first, then there will be brotherhood, and only then will there be a fair sharing of goods among brothers.
Equality is to be found only in the spiritual dignity of man
Schoolboys are a merciless race, individually they are angels, but together, especially in schools, they are often merciless.
I don’t need you to tell me I’m not well, though I don’t really know what’s wrong with me; I think I’m five times healthier than you are.
In Russia, drunks are our kindest people. Our kindest people are also the most drunk.
His mind is in bondage. He is haunted by a great, usolved doubt. He is one of those who doesn’t want millions, but an answer to their questions.
Even if I be likened to a rat, I do not care, provided that that particular rat be wanted by you, and be of use in the world, and be retained in its position, and receive its reward. But what a rat it is!
Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen.
A percentage! What splendid words they have; they are so scientific, so consolatory…. Once you’ve said ‘percentage’ there’s nothing more to worry about. If we had any other word… maybe we might feel more uneasy….
The first category is always the man of the present, the second the man of the future. The first preserve the world and people it, the second move the world and lead it to its goal.
Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort.
Indeed, in that sense we’re all rather often almost like mad people, only with the slight difference that the ‘sick’ are somewhat madder than we are, so that it’s necessary to draw a line here.
Do you know, Alexey Fyodorovitch, how people do go out of their mind?
I looked at her for three seconds, or five perhaps, with fearful hatred-that hate which is only a hair’s-breath from love, from the maddest love!
Or perhaps it is because it is so NECESSARY for you to win. It is like a drowning man catching at a straw. You yourself will agree that, unless he were drowning he would not mistake a straw for the trunk of a tree.
We are born dead, and moreover we have long ceased to be the sons of living fathers; and we become more and more contented with our condition. We are acquiring the taste for it. Soon we shall invent a method of being born from an idea.
If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.The Brothers KaramazovMitya (Dmitri) to Aloysha who visits him in prison, Book XI – Ivan, Chapter 4 – A Hymn and a Secret.
Right or wrong, it’s very pleasant to break something from time to time.
The instinct of self-preservation and the urge to self-destruction are equally strong in man! The Devil has equal a sway over humanity as God until a time still unknown to us.
I would give away all this superstellar life, all the ranks and honours, simply to be transformed into the soul of a merchant’s wife weighing eighteen stone and set candles at God’s shrine
You see, there’s a theory current you’re insane, or you lean strongly in that direction.
Oh, those grumblers! They all take principles as motives and dare not follow their desires.
She’ll come, if not today, then tomorrow, but she’ll find me. That’s the cursed romanticism of all these pure hearts! Oh the vileness, oh the stupidity, oh the narrowness, of these rotten, sentimental souls
But in the end I’d marry her to the one she herself loved. To a father, the man his daughter falls in love with herself always seems the worst. That’s how it is.
Since man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a rebel.
It’s not miracles that generate faith, but faith that generates miracles
They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown less.
I will put up with any mockery rather than pretend that I am satisfied when I am hungry.
If God thought it necessary to offer rewards for love, your God must be immoral.
…and in fact I’ve noticed that faith always seems to be less in the daytime
What’s the most offensive is not their lying- one can always forgive lying- lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth- what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying….
they may all be drunk at my place, but they’re all honest, and though we do lie-because I lie, too-in the end we’ll lie our way to the truth
I can’t bear the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom.
The only gain of civilisation for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations – and absolutely nothing more.
You sensed that you should be following a different path, a more ambitious one, you felt that you were destined for other things but you had no idea how to achieve them and in your misery you began to hate everything around you.
– What is a Socialist?- That’s when all are equal and all have property in common, there are no marriages, and everyone has any religion and laws he likes best. You are not old enough to understand that yet.
Ah, Misha, he has a stormy spirit. His mind is in bondage. He is haunted by a great, unsolved doubt. He is one of those who don’t want millions, but an answer to their questions.
It’s life that matters, nothing but life—the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.
We’ve got facts,” they say. But facts aren’t everything; at least half the battle consists in how one makes use of them!
At first it was simply liking, Nastenka, but now, now !I am just in the same position as you were when you went to him with your bundle. In a worse position than you, Nastenka,because he cared for no one else as you do.
In any case, you must remember, my dearest, that the main strength of innocence is innocence itself. farewell.
You will have many enemies, but even your foes will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will find your happiness in them, and will bless life and will make others bless it–which is what matters most.
To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.
And what if there are only spiders there, or something of that sort
Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.
I love it when people lie! Lying is only man’s privilege over all other organisms. Lying is what makes me a man.
The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.
Often a man endures for several years, submits and suffers the cruellest punishments, and then suddenly breaks out over some minute trifle, almost nothing at all.
You are really angry with me for not having appeared to you in a red glow, with thunder and lightning, with scorched wings
People talk sometimes of ‘bestial’ cruelty, but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beast; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically, so artfully cruel.
Man is a pliant animal a being who gets accustomed to anything.
Man is fond of counting his troubles but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.
What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing but if we are to give everything its due twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.
Every time you pray if your prayer is sincere there will be new feeling and new meaning in it which will give you fresh courage and you will understand that prayer is an education.
If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself.
Originality and the feeling of one’s own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.
A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments.