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Ah, Father! That’s Words And Only Words! Forgive! If He’d Not Been Run Over, He’d Have Come Home Today Drunk And His Only Shirt Dirty And In Rags And He’d Have Fallen Asleep Like A Log, And I Should Have Been Sousing And Rinsing Till Daybreak, Washing His Rags And The Children’s And Then Drying Them By The Window And As Soon As It Was Daylight I Should Have Been Darning Them. What’s The Use Of Talking Forgiveness! I Have Forgiven As It Is!

-Fyodor Dostoevsky

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Ah, Father! That’s Words

Fyodor Dostoevsky

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Ah, Father! That’s Words And Only Words! Forgive! If He’d Not Been Run Over, He’d Have Come Home Today Drunk And His Only Shirt Dirty And In Rags And He’d Have Fallen Asleep Like A Log, And I Should Have Been Sousing And Rinsing Till Daybreak, Washing His Rags And The Children’s And Then Drying Them By The Window And As Soon As It Was Daylight I Should Have Been Darning Them. What’s The Use Of Talking Forgiveness! I Have Forgiven As It Is!

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Love In Action Is A Harsh And Dreadful Thing Compared With Love In Dreams.

Man Is Sometimes Extraordinarily, Passionately, In Love With Suffering.

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When . . . In The Course Of All These Thousands Of Years Has Man Ever Acted In Accordance With His Own Interests?

I Do Not Rebel Against My God, I Simply Do Not Accept His World.

Man Is A Pliable Animal, A Being Who Gets Accustomed To Everything!

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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.

Walking Along The Crowded Row He Met The One He Used To Know.

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They Were Renewed By Love; The Heart Of Each Held Infinite Sources Of Life For The Heart Of The Other.

One Circumstance Tormented Me Then: Namely, That No One Else Was Like Me, And I Was Like No One Else. I Am Only One, And They Are All.

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Falling In Love

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Lying Is A Delightful Thing, For It Leads To Truth.

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What Man Wants Is Simply Independent Choice, Whatever That Independence May Cost And Wherever It May Lead.

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The Consciousness Of Life Is Higher Than Life.

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

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The World Will Be Saved By Beauty.

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Love The Animals: God Has Given Them The Rudiments Of Thought And Joy Untroubled.

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To Kill Someone For Committing Murder Is A Punishment Incomparably Worse Than The Crime Itself. Murder By Legal Sentence Is Immeasurably More Terrible Than Murder By Brigands.

Here My Tears Are Falling, Nastenka. Let Them Flow, Let Them Flow - They Don't Hurt Anybody. They Will Dry Nastenka.

The Cleverest Of All, In My Opinion, Is The Man Who Calls Himself A Fool At Least Once A Month.

To Think Too Much Is A Disease.

I Saw Clear As Daylight How Strange It Is That Not A Single Person Living In This Mad World Has Had The Daring To Go Straight For It All And Send It Flying To The Devil! I...i Wanted To Have The Daring...and I Killed Her.

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Although Your Mind Works, Your Heart Is Darkened With Depravity; And Without A Pure Heart There Can Be No Complete And True Consciousness

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Hang Your Merit. I Don't Seek Anyone's Approbation.

I Wanted To Discuss The Suffering Of Humanity In General, But Perhaps We'd Better Confine Ourselves To The Sufferings Of Children.

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If The Spirit Has Passed Through A Great Many Sensations, Possibly It Can No Longer Be Sated With Them, But Grows More Excited, And Demands More Sensations, And Stronger And Stronger Ones, Until At Length It Falls Exhausted.

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.

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.

The More Incompetent One Feels, The More Eager He Is To Fight.

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.

I Swear To You, Sirs, That Excessive Consciousness Is A Disease--a Genuine, Absolute Disease.

Of Course I Shall Go Astray Often...for Who Does Not Make Mistakes? But I Cannot Go Far Wrong For I Have Seen The Truth.

Making Mistakes

Nothing In This World Is Harder Than Speaking The Truth, Nothing Easier Than Flattery.

Nothing Is Easier Than To Denounce The Evildoer; Nothing Is More Difficult Than To Understand Him.

Every Man Looks Out For Himself, And He Has The Happiest Life Who Manages To Hoodwink Himself Best Of All.

I Agree That Two Times Two Makes Four Is An Excellent Thing; But If We Are Dispensing Praise, Then Two Times Two Makes Five Is Sometimes A Most Charming Little Thing As Well.

If The Person Laughs Well, They Are A Good Person.

A True Friend Of Mankind Whose Heart Has But Once Quivered In Compassion Over The Sufferings Of The People, Will Understand And Forgive All The Impassable Alluvial Filth In Which They Are Submerged, And Will Be Able To Discover The Diamonds In The Filth.

Civilization Has Made Man, If Not Always More Bloodthirsty, At Least More Viciously, More Horribly Bloodthirsty.

I Have Been Tortured With Longing To Believe ... And The Yearning Grows Stronger The More Cogent The Intellectual Difficulties Stand In The Way.

Deprived Of Meaningful Work, Men And Women Lose Their Reason For Existence; They Go Stark, Raving Mad.

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.

There Is No Virtue If There Is No Immortality.

I Suddenly Dreamt That I Picked Up The Revolver And Aimed It Straight At My Heart My Heart, And Not My Head; And I Had Determined Beforehand To Fire At My Head, At My Right Temple. After Aiming At My Chest I Waited A Second Or Two, And Suddenly My Candle , My Table, And The Wall In Front Of Me Began Moving And Heaving. I Made Haste To Pull The Trigger.

I Punish Myself For My Whole Life, My Whole Life I Punish.

Do You Believe In A Future Everlasting Life? No, Not In A Future Everlasting But In An Everlasting Life Here. There Are Moments, You Reach Moments, And Time Comes To A Sudden Stop, And It Will Become Eternal.

The More You Succeed In Loving, The More You'll Be Convinced At The Existence Of God And The Immortality Of Your Soul.

Love To Throw Yourself On The Earth And Kiss It. Kiss The Earth And Love It With An Unceasing, Consuming Love.

Do You Know I Don't Know How One Can Walk By A Tree And Not Be Happy At The Sight Of It? How Can One Talk To A Man And Not Be Happy In Loving Him! Oh, It's Only That I'm Not Able To Express It...and What Beautiful Things There Are At Every Step, That Even The Most Hopeless Man Must Feel To Be Beautiful! Look At A Child! Look At God's Sunrise! Look At The Grass, How It Grows! Look At The Eyes That Gaze At You And Love You!

Compassion Is The Chief Law Of Human Existence.

In The End They Will Lay Their Freedom At Our Feet And Say To Us, Make Us Your Slaves, But Feed Us.

If Everything On Earth Were Rational, Nothing Would Happen.

I Almost Do Not Exist Now And I Know It; God Knows What Lives In Me In Place Of Me.

Truly Great Men Must, I Think, Experience Great Sorrow On The Earth.

One Must Be A Great Man Indeed To Be Able To Hold Out Even Against Common Sense." "or Else A Fool.

There Is Nothing Higher And Stronger And More Wholesome And Useful For Life In Later Years Than Some Good Memory, Especially A Memory Connected With Childhood, With Home.

For Broad Understanding And Deep Feeling, You Need Pain And Suffering.

I Am Alone, I Thought, And They Are Everybody.

Coming At Twenty To His Father's House, Which Was A Very Sink Of Filthy Debauchery, He, Chaste And Pure As He Was, Simply Withdrew In Silence When To Look On Was Unbearable, But Without The Slightest Sign Of Contempt Or Condemnation. His Father, Who Had Once Been In A Dependent Position, And So Was Sensitive And Ready To Take Offense, Met Him At First With Distrust And Sullenness.

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.

He Who Masters The Grey Everyday Is A Hero.

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