Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than anyone else. You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take offense, isn't it? A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a mountain out of a molehill--he knows that himself, yet he will be the first to take offense, and will revel in his resentment till he feels great pleasure in it.”

“What makes a hero? Courage, strength, morality, withstanding adversity? Are these the traits that truly show and create a hero? Is the light truly the source of darkness or vice versa? Is the soul a source of hope or despair? Who are these so called heroes and where do they come from? Are their origins in obscurity or in plain sight?”

“I sometimes think love consists precisely of the voluntary gift by the loved object of the right to tyrannize over it. ”

“After all, bluff and real emotion exist so easily side by side. ”

“And if there's love, you can do without happiness too. Even with sorrow, life is sweet. ”

“Every decent man of our time is and is bound to be a coward and a slave. This is his normal condition. I am deeply convinced of that. This is how he is constituted, and this is what he is meant to be. ”

“Destroy my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I will follow you.”

“And yet I am convinced that man will never give up true suffering- that is, destruction and chaos. Why, suffering is the sole root of consciousness.”

“Two times two will be four even without my will. Is that what you call man's free will?”

“What does reason know? It knows only what it has managed to learn (and it may never learn anything else; that isn't very reassuring, but why not admit it?), while human nature acts as a complete entity, with all that is in it, consciously or unconsciously; and though it may be wrong, it's nevertheless alive. ”

“Civilization merely develops man's capacity for a greater variety of sensations, and... absolutely nothing else. And through the development of this capacity, man may yet come to find pleasure in the spilling of blood.”

“But man is so addicted to systems and to abstract conclusions that he is prepared deliberately to distort the truth, to close his eyes and ears, but justify his logic at all cost. ”

“And before you know it, the object disappears, arguments evaporate; no culprit is discovered, the offense ceases to be an offense and becomes a matter of fate, like the toothache which cannot be blamed on anyone, and the only thing that's left is, once again, to bang the wall as hard as you can. ”

“In such situations, of course, people don't nurse their anger silently, they moan aloud; but these are not frank, straightforward moans, there is a kind of cunning malice in them, and that's the whole point. Those very moans express the sufferer's delectation; if he did not enjoy his moans, he wouldn't be moaning. ”

“You must accept it as it is, and hence accept all consequences. A wall is indeed a wall.”

“But it's precisely in this cold, loathsome half-despair, half-belief, in this deliberate burying of yourself underground for forty years out of sheer pain, in this assiduously constructed, and yet somewhat dubious hopelessness, in all this poision of unfulfilled desires turned inward, this fever of vacillations, of resolutions adopted for eternity, and of repentances a moment later that you find the very essence of that strange, sharp pleasure.”

“It's in despair that you find the sharpest pleasures, particularly when you are most acutely aware of the hopelessness of your position.”

“This pleasure comes precisely from the sharpest awareness of your own degradation; from the knowledge that you have gone to the utmost limit; that it is despicable, yet cannot be otherwise; that you no longer have any way out; that you will never become a different man.”

“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.”

“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”

“...despair can hold the most intense sorts of pleasure when one is strongly conscious of the hopelessness of one's position...”

“Perezvon (the dog) ran about in the wildest spirits, sniffing about first one side, then the other. When he met other dogs they zealously smelt each other over according to the rules of canine etiquette.”

“Although your mind works, your heart isdarkened with depravity; and without a pure heart there can be no complete and true consciousness”

“No, not 'Very well, Your Excellency', but simply 'Your Excellency'! I told you to watch your tone, Colonel! I also trust you will not be offended if I suggest you make a slight bow and at the same time incline your body forward, so as to indicate respect and also, as it were, readiness to dash off on an errand for him. I've been in the company of generals myself, so I know what I'm talking about ... So 'Your Excellency'.”

“If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.”

“They were like two enemies in love with one another.”

“Though these young men unhappily fail tounderstand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest ofall sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years oftheir seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to multiplytenfold their powers of serving the truth and the cause they have setbefore them as their goal--such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strengthof many of them. ”

“A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.”

“I think that if one is faced by inevitable destruction -- if a house is falling upon you, for instance -- one must feel a great longing to sit down, close one's eyes and wait, come what may...”

“Luxuries are easy to take up but very difficult to give up”

“One cannot prove anything here, but it is possible to be convinced.'How? By what?'By the experience of active love. Try to love your neighbors actively and tirelessly. The more you succeed in loving, the more you'll be convinced of the existence of God and the immortality of your soul. And if you reach complete selflessness in the love of your neighbor, then undoubtedly you will believe, and no doubt will even be able to enter your soul. This has been tested. It is certain...Active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one's life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and everyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and perseverance, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science...in that very moment when you see with horror that despite all your efforts, you not only have not come nearer your goal but seem to have gotten farther from it, at that very moment...you will suddenly reach your goal and will clearly behold over you the wonder-working power of the Lord, who all the while has been loving you, and all the while has been mysteriously guiding you.”

“At home, I mainly used to read. I wished to stifle with external sensations all that was ceaselessly boiling up inside me. And among external sensations the only one possible for me was reading. Reading was, of course, a great help. It stirred, delighted, and tormented me.”

“Don’t be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid - the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again.”

“God is the pain of the fear of death”

“Be near your brothers. Not just one, but both of them.”

“What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning...”

“...if there really is some day discovered a formula for all our desires and caprices - that is, an explanation of what they depend upon, by what laws they arise, how they develop, what they are aiming at in one case and in another and so on, that is a real mathematical formula - then, most likely, man will at once cease to feel desire, indeed, he will be certain to. For who would want to choose by rule? Besides, he will at once be transformed from a human being into an organ-stop or something of that sort; for what is a man without desires, without freewill and without choice, if not a stop in an organ?”

“... in St. Petersburg, the most abstract and intentional city on the entire globe. (Cities and be intentional or unintentional.”

“We don't understand that life is heaven, for we have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, we shall embrace each other and weep.”

“And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and the positive--in other words, only what is conducive to welfare--is for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact.”

“There is, indeed, nothing more annoying than to be, for instance, wealthy, of good family, nice-looking, fairly intelligent, and even good-natured, and yet to have no talents, no special faculty, no peculiarity even, not one idea of one's own, to be precisely "like other people.”

“Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.”

“And so in that very shame I suddenly begin a hymn.”

“Don't think I'm talking nonsense because I'm drunk. I'm not a bit drunk. Brandy's all very well, but I need two bottles to make me drunk.”

“Father monks, why do you fast! Why do you expect reward in heaven for that?...No, saintly monk, you try being virtuous in the world, do good to society, without shutting yourself up in a monastery at other people's expense, and without expecting a reward up aloft for it--you'll find that a bit harder.”

“If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love...Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and expiate not only your own sins but the sins of others.”

“To my thinking, miracles are never a stumbling block to the realist. It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief...Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith.”

“As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple-hearted than we supposed. And we ourselves are, too.”

“One man doesn't believe in god at all, while the other believes in him so thoroughly that he prays as he murders men!”

“It is necessary that every man have at least somewhere to go. For there are times when one absolutely must go at least somewhere!”