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I Myself Will Perhaps Cry Out With All The Rest, Looking At The Mother Embracing Her Child's Tormentor: 'just Art Thou, O Lord!' But I Do Not Want To Cry Out With Them. While There's Still Time, I Hasten To Defend Myself Against It, And Therefore I Absolutely Renounce All Higher Harmony. It Is Not Worth One Little Tear Of Even That One Tormented Child Who Beat Her Chest With Her Little Fist And Prayed To 'dear God' In A Stinking Outhouse With Her Unredeemed Tears!

-Fyodor Dostoevsky

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I Myself Will Perhaps

Fyodor Dostoevsky

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I Myself Will Perhaps Cry Out With All The Rest, Looking At The Mother Embracing Her Child's Tormentor: 'just Art Thou, O Lord!' But I Do Not Want To Cry Out With Them. While There's Still Time, I Hasten To Defend Myself Against It, And Therefore I Absolutely Renounce All Higher Harmony. It Is Not Worth One Little Tear Of Even That One Tormented Child Who Beat Her Chest With Her Little Fist And Prayed To 'dear God' In A Stinking Outhouse With Her Unredeemed Tears!

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Sometimes We Desire Absolute Nonsense Because In Our Stupidity We See In This Nonsense The Easiest Way Of Attaining Some Conjectural Good.

Life Is What Matters, Life Alone - The Continuous, Eternal Process Of Discovering Life - And Not The Discovery Itself.

From A Hundred Rabbits You Can't Make A Horse.

At Some Thoughts One Stands Perplexed, Especially At The Sight Of Men's Sin, And Wonders Whether One Should Use Force Or Humble Love. Always Decide To Use Humble Love. If You Resolve On That Once For All, You May Subdue The Whole World.

Atheism: It Seeks To Replace In Itself The Moral Power Of Religion, In Order To Appease The Spiritual Thirst Of Parched Humanity And Save It; Not By Christ, But By Force.

Homeopathic Doses Are Perhaps The Strongest.

Only The Heart Knows How To Find What Is Precious.

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.

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.

There Is No Virtue If There Is No Immortality.

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Your Hand Is Cold, Mine Burns Like Fire. How Blind You Are, Nastenka!

Pass Us By, And Forgive Us Our Happiness

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.

Imagine That You Are Creating A Fabric Of Human Destiny With The Object Of Making Men Happy In The End, Giving Them Peace And Rest At Last. Imagine That You Are Doing This But That It Is Essential And Inevitable To Torture To Death Only One Tiny Creature...in Order To Found That Edifice On Its Unavenged Tears. Would You Consent To Be The Architect On Those Conditions? Tell Me. Tell The Truth.

We Sometimes Encounter People, Even Perfect Strangers, Who Begin To Interest Us At First Sight, Somehow Suddenly, All At Once, Before A Word Has Been Spoken.

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

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.

When He Has Lost All Hope, All Object In Life, Man Becomes A Monster In His Misery.

God Knows What Lives In Me In Place Of Me.

To Achieve Perfection, One Must First Begin By Not Understanding Many Things! And If We Understand Too Quickly, We May Not Understand Well.

I Believe The Best Definition Of Man Is The Ungrateful Biped.

Of Course My Jokes Are In Poor Taste, Inappropriate, And Confused; They Reveal My Lack Of Security. But That Is Because I Have No Respect For Myself.

To Live Without Hope Is To Cease To Live.

Hoping For The Best

Yes, That's Right... Love Should Come Before Logic ... Only Then Will Man Come To Understand The Meaning Of Life.

Meaning Of Life

...one May Say Anything About The History Of The World - Anything That Might Enter The Most Disordered Imagination. The Only Thing One Can't Say Is That It's Rational.

The Greatest Happiness Is To Know The Source Of Unhappiness.

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.

The Golden Age Is The Most Implausible Of All Dreams. But For It Men Have Given Up Their Life And Strength; For The Sake Of It Prophets Have Died And Been Slain; Without It The People Will Not Live And Cannot Die.

Fathers, Provoke Not Your Children To Wrath.

To Be Too Conscious Is An Illness. A Real Thorough Going Illness.

I Did Not Bow Down To You, I Bowed Down To All The Suffering Of Humanity.

Beggars, Especially Noble Beggars, Should Never Show Themselves In The Street; They Should Ask For Alms Through The Newspapers. It's Still Possible To Love One's Neighbor Abstractly, And Even Occasionally From A Distance, But Hardly Ever Up Close.

There Is Nothing Easier Than Lopping Off Heads And Nothing Harder Than Developing Ideas.

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?

Right Attitudes Produces Right Action

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.

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 Say Let The World Go To Hell, But I Should Always Have My Tea.

To Love Is To Suffer And There Can Be No Love Otherwise.

What Tender And Devoted Mother Wouldn't Be Dismayed And Ill With Terror At Her Son's Or Daughter's Stepping Even One Hair's Breath Off The Beaten Track. No, Better Let Him Be Happy And Live In Comfort Without Originality, Is What Every Mother Thinks When She Rocks The Cradle. The Only Person Among Us Who Can Fail To Reach The General's Rank Is The Original Man - In Other Words, The Man Who Won't Be Quiet.

Love Is A Teacher, But One Must Know How To Acquire It, For It Is Difficult To Acquire, It Is Dearly Bought, By Long Work Over A Long Time, For One Ought To Love Not For A Chance Moment But For All Time. Anyone, Even A Wicked Man, Can Love By Chance.

You Must Accept It As It Is, And Hence Accept All Consequences. A Wall Is Indeed A Wall.

We Always Imagine Eternity As Something Beyond Our Conception, Something Vast, Vast! But Why Must It Be Vast?

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