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If I Seem Happy To You . . . You Could Never Say Anything That Would Please Me More. For Men Are Made For Happiness, And Anyone Who Is Completely Happy Has A Right To Say To Himself, 'i Am Doing God's Will On Earth.' All The Righteous, All The Saints, All The Holy Martyrs Were Happy.

-Fyodor Dostoevsky

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If I Seem Happy

Fyodor Dostoevsky

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If I Seem Happy To You . . . You Could Never Say Anything That Would Please Me More. For Men Are Made For Happiness, And Anyone Who Is Completely Happy Has A Right To Say To Himself, 'i Am Doing God's Will On Earth.' All The Righteous, All The Saints, All The Holy Martyrs Were Happy.

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I Have In My Own Life Merely Carried To The Extreme That Which You Have Never Ventured To Carry Even Halfway ; And What's More, You've Regarded Your Cowardice As Prudence, And Found Comfort In Deceiving Yourselves. So That, In Fact, I May Be Even More "alive" Than You Are. Do Take A Closer Look!

So Long As Man Remains Free He Strives For Nothing So Incessantly And So Painfully As To Find Someone To Worship.

A Hundred Suspicions Don't Make A Proof.

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.

Do You Understand, Sir, Do You Understand What It Means When You Have Absolutely Nowhere To Turn?" Marmeladov's Question Came Suddenly Into His Mind "for Every Man Must Have Somewhere To Turn.

It Is Precisely That Requirement Of Shared Worship That Has Been The Principal Source Of Suffering For Individual Man And The Human Race Since The Beginning Of History. In Their Efforts To Impose Universal Worship, Men Have Unsheathed Their Swords And Killed One Another. They Have Invented Gods And Challenged Each Other: "discard Your Gods And Worship Mine Or I Will Destroy Both Your Gods And You!"

I Have A Plan-to Go Mad.

The Mystery Of Human Existence Lies Not In Just Staying Alive, But In Finding Something To Live For.

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

Neither A Person Nor A Nation Can Exist Without Some Higher Idea. And There Is Only One Higher Idea On Earth, And It Is The Idea Of The Immortality Of The Human Soul, For All Other "higher" Ideas Of Life By Which Humans Might Live Derive From That Idea Alone.

My Friend, The Truth Is Always Implausible, Did You Know That? To Make The Truth More Plausible, It's Absolutely Necessary To Mix A Bit Of Falsehood With It. People Have Always Done So.

Woe To The Suicides! I Believe That There Can Be None More Miserable Than They. Oh, There Are Some Who Remain Proud And Fierce Even In Hell, In Spite Of Their Certain Knowledge And Contemplation Of The Absolute Truth; There Are Some Fearful Ones Who Have Given Themselves Over To Satan And His Proud Spirit Entirely. For Such, Hell Is Voluntary And Ever Consuming; They Are Tortured By Their Own Choice. For They Have Cursed Themselves, Cursing God And Life. And They Will Burn In The Fire Of Their Own Wrath Forever And Yearn For Death And Annihilation. But They Will Not Attain To Death.

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?

For The Secret Of Man's Being Is Not Only To Live But To Have Something To Live For. Without A Stable Conception Of The Object Of Life, Man Would Not Consent To Go On Living, And Would Rather Destroy Himself Than Remain On Earth, Though He Had Bread In Abundance.

Brother, I’m Not Depressed And Haven’t Lost Spirit. Life Everywhere Is Life, Life Is In Ourselves And Not In The External. There Will Be People Near Me, And To Be A Human Being Among Human Beings, And Remain One Forever, No Matter What Misfortunes Befall, Not To Become Depressed, And Not To Falter – This Is What Life Is, Herein Lies Its Task.

The Greatest Happiness Is To Know The Source Of Unhappiness.

I Used To Imagine Adventures For Myself, I Invented A Life, So That I Could At Least Exist Somehow.

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.

Learning To Love Is Hard And We Pay Dearly For It. It Takes Hard Work And A Long Apprenticeship, For It Is Not Just For A Moment That We Must Learn To Love, But Forever.

It Is Not As A Child That I Believe And Confess Jesus Christ. My Hosanna Is Born Of A Furnace Of Doubt.

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.

I Know You'll Probably Get Angry With Me For That, Shout, Stamp Your Feet: "speak Just For Yourself And Your Miseries In The Underground, And Don't Go Saying 'we All.'" Excuse Me, Gentleman, But I Am Not Justifying Myself With This Allishness. As Far As I Myself Am Concerned, I Have Merely Carried To An Extreme In My Life What You Have Not Dared To Carry Even Halfway, And, What's More, You've Taken Your Cowardice For Good Sense, And Found Comfort In Thus Deceiving Yourselves. So That I, Perhaps, Come Out Even More "living" Than You.

Come, Try, Give Any One Of Us, For Instance, A Little More Independence, Untie Our Hands, Widen The Spheres Of Our Activity, Relax The Control And We...yes, I Assure You...we Should Be Begging To Be Under Control Again At Once.

I Do Not Wish You Much Happiness--it Would Bore You; I Do Not Wish You Trouble Either; But, Following The People's Philosophy, I Will Simply Repeat: 'live More' And Try Somehow Not To Be Too Bored; This Useless Wish I Am Adding On My Own.

I Used To Analyze Myself Down To The Last Thread, Used To Compare Myself With Others, Recalled All The Smallest Glances, Smiles And Words Of Those To Whom I’d Tried To Be Frank, Interpreted Everything In A Bad Light, Laughed Viciously At My Attempts ‘to Be Like The Rest’ –and Suddenly, In The Midst Of My Laughing, I’d Give Way To Sadness, Fall Into Ludicrous Despondency And Once Again Start The Whole Process All Over Again – In Short, I Went Round And Round Like A Squirrel On A Wheel.

The World Has Proclaimed The Reign Of Freedom, Especially Of Late, But What Do We See In This Freedom Of Theirs? Nothing But Slavery And Self-destruction! For The World Says: "you Have Desires And So Satisfy Them, For You Have The Same Rights As The Most Rich And Powerful. Don't Be Afraid Of Satisfying Them And Even Multiply Your Desires."

The Consciousness Of Life Is Higher Than Life.

I Swear To You Gentlemen, That To Be Overly Conscious Is A Sickness, A Real, Thorough Sickness.

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.

The Man Who Lies To Himself And Listens To His Own Lie Comes To Such A Pass That He Cannot Distinguish The Truth Within Him.

He Who Desires To See The Living God Face-to-face Should Not Seek Him In The Empty, Firmament Of His Mind, But In Human Love.

Let Us Not Forget That The Reasons For Human Actions Are Usually Incalculably More Complex And Diverse Than We Tend To Explain Them Later, And Are Seldom Clearly Manifest.

I Could Not Become Anything; Neither Good Nor Bad; Neither A Scoundrel Nor An Honest Man; Neither A Hero Nor An Insect. And Now I Am Eking Out My Days In My Corner, Taunting Myself With The Bitter And Entirely Useless Consolation That An Intelligent Man Cannot Seriously Become Anything, That Only A Fool Can Become Something.

One Could Never Judge A Man Without Seeing Him Close, For Oneself.

You Know, My Boy, He Said, It's Impossible To Love Men Such As They Are. And Yet We Must. So Try To Do Good To Men By Doing Violence To Your Feelings, Holding Your Nose, And Shutting Your Eyes, Especially Shutting Your Eyes. Endure Their Villainy Without Anger, As Much As Possible; Try To Remember That You're A Man Too. For, If You're Even A Little Above Average Intelligence, You'll Have The Propensity To Judge People Severely. Men Are Vile By Nature And They'd Rather Love Out Of Fear. Don't Give In To Such Love: Despise It Always.

If You Wish To Glimpse Inside A Human Soul And Get To Know A Man ... Just Watch Him Laugh. If He Laughs Well, He's A Good Man.

If Everything On Earth Were Rational, Nothing Would Happen.

But How Could You Live And Have No Story To Tell?

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.

As For Me, This Is My Story: I Worked And Was Tortured. You Know What It Means To Compose? No, Thank God, You Do Not! I Believe You Have Never Written To Order, By The Yard, And Have Never Experienced That Hellish Torture.

The Jealous Are The Readiest Of All To Forgive, And All Women Know It.

I Never Have Frustrations. The Reason Is To Wit: Of At First I Don't Succeed, I Quit!

Nothing Is More Seductive For A Man Than His Freedom Of Conscience, But Nothing Is A Greater Cause Of Suffering.

I Want To Suffer So That I May Love.

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.

I Am A Wicked Man... But Do You Know, Gentlemen, What Was The Main Point About My Wickedness? The Whole Thing, Precisely Was, The Greatest Nastiness Precisely Lay In My Being Shamefully Conscious Every Moment, Even In Moments Of The Greatest Bile, That I Was Not Only Not A Wicked Man But Was Not Even An Embittered Man, That I Was Simply Frightening Sparrows In Vain, And Pleasing Myself With It.

I Love The Sticky Leaves In Spring, The Blue Sky — That’s All It Is. It’s Not A Matter Of Intellect Or Logic, It’s Loving With One’s Inside, With One’s Stomach.

Man Is Unhappy Because He Doesn't Know He's Happy. If Anyone Finds Out He'll Become Happy At Once.

I Am A Sick Man...i Am A Spiteful Man. I Am A Most Unpleasant Man.

But Yet I Am Firmly Persuaded That A Great Deal Of Consciousness, Every Sort Of Consciousness, In Fact, Is A Disease.

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.

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?

Totally Without Hope One Cannot Live. To Live Without Hope Is To Cease To Live. Hell Is Hopelessness. It Is No Accident That Above The Entrance To Dante's Hell Is The Inscription: "leave Behind All Hope, You Who Enter Here."

When I Look Back On My Past And Think How Much Time I Wasted On Nothing, How Much Time Has Been Lost In Futilities, Errors, Laziness, Incapacity To Live; How Little I Appreciated It, How Many Times I Sinned Against My Heart And Soul-then My Heart Bleeds. Life Is A Gift, Life Is Happiness, Every Minute Can Be An Eternity Of Happiness.

Gentlemen, I Am Tormented By Questions; Answer Them For Me.

And What's Strange, What Would Be Marvelous, Is Not That God Should Really Exist; The Marvel Is That Such An Idea, The Idea Of The Necessity Of God, Could Enter The Head Of Such A Savage, Vicious Beast As Man.

In The Realist, Faith Is Not Born From Miracles, But Miracles From Faith.

Life Is Paradise, And We Are All In Paradise, But We Refuse To See It.

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. If I, A Sinner Even As You Are, Am Tender With You And Have Pity On You, How Much More Will God Have Pity Upon You. Love Is Such A Priceless Treasure That You Can Redeem The Whole World By It, And Cleanse Not Only Your Own Sins But The Sins Of Others.

The More Conscious I Was Of Goodness And Of All That Was 'sublime And Beautiful,'the More Deeply I Sank Into My Mire And The More Ready I Was To Sink In It Altogether.

Compassion Is The Chief Law Of Human Existence.

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.

Men Do Not Accept Their Prophets And Slay Them, But They Love Their Martyrs And Worship Those Whom They Have Tortured To Death.

Even There, In The Mines, Underground, I May Find A Human Heart In Another Convict And Murderer By My Side, And I May Make Friends With Him, For Even There One May Live And Love And Suffer. One May Thaw And Revive A Frozen Heart In That Convict, One May Wait Upon Him For Years, And At Last Bring Up From The Dark Depths A Lofty Soul, A Feeling, Suffering Creature; One May Bring Forth An Angel, Create A Hero! There Are So Many Of Them, Hundreds Of Them, And We Are All To Blame For Them. [...] If They Drive God From The Earth, We Shall Shelter Him Underground.

An Anguish Of Longing Would Boil Up Inside Me; A Hysterical Thirst For Contradictions And Contrasts Would Appear, And I Would Embark On Dissipations.

Two And Two Make Four. Nature Doesn't Ask Your Advice. She Isn't Interested In Your Preferences Or Whether Or Not You Approve Of Her Laws. You Must Accept Nature As She Is With All The Consequences That That Implies.

In A Morbid Condition Of The Brain, Dreams Often Have A Singular Actuality, Vividness, And Extraordinary Semblance Of Reality.

Hold Your Tongue; You Won't Understand Anything. If There Is No God, Then I Am God.

There Is No God

What Is Hell?...the Suffering That Comes From The Consciousness That One Is No Longer Able To Love.

And Now I Am Eking Out My Days In My Corner, Taunting Myself With The Bitter And Entirely Useless Consolations That An Intelligent Man Cannot Seriously Become Anything; That Only A Fool Can Become Something. Yes, Sir, An Intelligent Nineteenth-century Man Must Be, Is Morally Bound To Be, An Essentially Characterless Creature; And A Man Of Character, A Man Of Action - An Essentially Limited Creature. This Is My Conviction At The Age Of Forty. I Am Forty Now, And Forty Years - Why, It Is All Of A Lifetime, It Is The Deepest Of Old Age. Living Past Forty Is Indecent, Vulgar, Immoral!

Intelligence Alone Is Not Nearly Enough When It Comes To Acting Wisely.

Sorrow Compressed My Heart, And I Felt I Would Die, And Then... Well, Then I Woke Up.

For What Is Man Without Desires, Without Free Will, And Without The Power Of Choice But A Stop In An Organ Pipe?

Love Life More Than The Meaning Of It?

Brothers Karamazov

We Must Never Forget That Human Motives Are Generally Far More Complicated Than We Are Apt To Suppose, And That We Can Very Rarely Accurately Describe The Motives Of Another.

Money Is Coined Liberty.

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

It Is Man's Unique Privilege, Among All Other Organisms. By Pursuing Falsehood You Will Arrive At The Truth!

Let Us Be Servants In Order To Be Leaders.

We Have All Lost Touch With Life, We All Limp, Each To A Greater Or Lesser Degree.

... What You Need More Than Anything In Life Is A Definite Position.

One's Own Free And Unfettered Volition, One's Own Caprice, However Wild, One's Own Fancy, Inflamed Sometimes To The Point Of Madness - That Is The One Best And Greatest Good, Which Is Never Taken Into Consideration Because It Cannot Fit Into Any Classification And The Omission Of Which Sends All Systems And Theories To The Devil.

One Can't Understand Everything At Once, We Can't Begin With Perfection All At Once! In Order To Reach Perfection One Must Begin By Being Ignorant Of A Great Deal. And If We Understand Things Too Quickly, Perhaps We Shan't Understand Them Thoroughly.

That's Just The Point: An Honest And Sensitive Man Opens His Heart, And The Man Of Business Goes On Eating - And Then He Eats You Up.

Listen, In Dreams And Especially In Nightmares, From Indigestion Or Anything, A Man Sees Sometimes Such Artistic Visions, Such Complex And Real Actuality, Such Events, Even A Whole World Of Events, Woven Into Such A Plot, With Such Unexpected Details From The Most Exalted Matters To The Last Button On A Cuff, As I Swear Leo Tolstoy Has Never Invented.

Drowning Men, It Is Said, Cling To Wisps Of Straw.

I Am A Dreamer. I Know So Little Of Real Life That I Just Can’t Help Re-living Such Moments As These In My Dreams, For Such Moments Are Something I Have Very Rarely Experienced. I Am Going To Dream About You The Whole Night, The Whole Week, The Whole Year.

Paradise Is Hidden In Each One Of Use, It Is Concealed Within Me Too, Right Now, And If I Wish, It Will Come For Me In Reality, Tomorrow Even, And For The Rest Of My Life.

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.

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

Taking A New Step. . .is What People Fear Most.

I Am Strongly Convinced That Not Only Too Much Consciousness But Even Any Consciousness At All Is A Sickness.

I Don’t Even Know What I’m Writing, I Have No Idea, I Don’t Know Anything, And I’m Not Reading Over It, And I’m Not Correcting My Style, And I’m Writing Just For The Sake Of Writing, Just For The Sake Of Writing More To You… My Precious, My Darling, My Dearest!

I Cannot Truly Imagine A Truly Great Person Who Hasn't Suffered.

I've Long Stopped Worrying About Who Invented Whom - God Man Or Man God.

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

Know That I've Forgotten Precisely Nothing; But I've Driven It All Out Of My Head For A Time, Even The Memories--until I've Radically Improved My Circumstances. Then...then You'll See, I'll Rise From The Dead!

For A Woman, All Resurrection, All Salvation, From Whatever Perdition, Lies In Love; In Fact, It Is Her Only Way To It.

And Though I Suffer For You, Yet It Eases My Heart To Suffer For You.

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?

There Are Things Which A Man Is Afraid To Tell Even To Himself, And Every Decent Man Has A Number Of Such Things Stored Away In His Mind.

Finding Yourself

I Will Not And Cannot Believe That Evil Is The Normal Condition Of Mankind.

The Absurd Is Only Too Necessary On Earth. The World Stands On Absurdities.

Everything Passes, Only Truth Remains.

For Example, I'm Terribly Proud. I'm As Mistrustful And As Sensitive As A Hunchback Or A Dwarf; But, In Truth, I've Experienced Some Moments When If Someone Had Slapped My Face, I Might Even Have Been Grateful For It. I'm Being Serious. I Probably Would Have Been Able To Derive A Peculiar Sort Of Pleasure From It-the Pleasure Of Despair, Naturally, But The Most Intense Pleasures Occur In Despair, Especially When You're Very Acutely Aware Of The Hopelessness Of Your Own Predicament.

It Is Better To Be Unhappy And Know The Worst, Than To Be Happy In A Fool's Paradise.

Even As I Approach The Gambling Hall, As Soon As I Hear, Two Rooms Away, The Jingle Of Money Poured Out On The Table, I Almost Go Into Convulsions.

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.

They Were Like Two Enemies In Love With One Another.

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.

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

At First, Art Imitates Life. Then Life Will Imitate Art.then Life Will Find Its Very Existence From The Arts.

Money Is Coined Liberty, And So It Is Ten Times Dearer To A Man Who Is Deprived Of Freedom. If Money Is Jingling In His Pocket, He Is Half Consoled, Even Though He Cannot Spend It.

When I Look Back At The Past And Think Of All The Time I Squandered In Error And Idleness,... Then My Heart Bleeds. Life Is A Gift... Every Minute Could Have Been An Eternity Of Happiness! If Only Youth Knew! Now My Life Will Change; Now I Will Be Reborn.

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.

Power Is Only Vouchsafed To The Man Who Dares To Stoop And Pick It Up. There Is Only One Thing, One Thing Needful: One Has Only To Dare!

He Who Masters The Grey Everyday Is A Hero.

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 Human

I Don’t Understand Anything...and I No Longer Want To Understand Anything. I Want To Stick To The Fact...if I Wanted To Understand Something, I Would Immediately Have To Betray The Fact, But I’ve Made Up My Mind To Stick To The Fact.

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.

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!

What If, When This Fog Scatters And Flies Upward, The Whole Rotten, Slimey City Goes With It, Rises With The Fog And Vanishes Like Smoke.

Humiliate The Reason And Distort The Soul.

You Pass By A Little Child, You Pass By, Spiteful, With Ugly Words, With Wrathful Heart; You May Not Have Noticed The Child, But He Has Seen You, And Your Image, Unseemly And Ignoble, May Remain In His Defenseless Heart. You Don't Know It, But You May Have Sown An Evil Seed In Him And It May Grow, And All Because You Were Not Careful Before The Child, Because You Did Not Foster In Yourself A Careful, Actively Benevolent Love.

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 Effort

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

If He's Honest, He'll Steal; If He's Human, He'll Murder; If He's Faithful, He'll Deceive.

Even Those Who Have Renounced Christianity And Attack It, In Their Inmost Being Still Follow The Christian Ideal, For Hitherto Neither Their Subtlety Nor The Ardour Of Their Hearts Has Been Able To Create A Higher Ideal Of Man And Of Virtue Than The Ideal Given By Christ Of Old.

Can A Man Possessing Conciousness Ever Really Respect Himself?

I Will Put Up With Any Mockery Rather Than Pretend That I Am Satisfied When I Am Hungry.

But Twice-two-makes-four Is For All That A Most Insupportable Thing. Twice-two-makes-four Is, In My Humble Opinion, Nothing But A Piece Of Impudence. Twice-two-makes-four Is A Farcical, Dressed-up Fellow Who Stands Across Your Path With Arms Akimbo And Spits At You.

There Is Only One Thing That I Dread: Not To Be Worthy Of My Sufferings.

Life Is In Ourselves And Not In The External.

I Think The Devil Doesn't Exist, But Man Has Created Him, He Has Created Him In His Own Image And Likeness.

It’s Not God That I Don’t Accept, Alyosha, Only I Most Respectfully Return Him The Ticket.

Brothers Karamazov

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.

But It Is Possible, It Is Possible: The Old Grief, By A Great Mystery Of Human Life, Gradually Passes Into Quiet, Tender Joy; Instead Of Young, Ebullient Blood Comes A Mild, Serene Old Age: I Bless The Sun's Rising Each Day And My Heart Sings To It As Before, But Now I Love Its Setting Even More, Its Long Slanting Rays, And With Them Quiet, Mild, Tender Memories, Dear Images From The Whole Of A Long And Blessed Life--and Over All Is God's Truth, Moving, Reconciling, All-forgiving!

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

If They Drive God From The Earth, We Shall Shelter Him Underground.

It Is Easier For A Russian To Become An Atheist, Than For Any Other Nationality In The World. And Not Only Does A Russian 'become An Atheist,' But He Actually Believes In Atheism, Just As Though He Had Found A New Faith, Not Perceiving That He Has Pinned His Faith To A Negation. Such Is Our Anguish Of Thirst!

And The More I Drink The More I Feel It. That's Why I Drink Too. I Try To Find Sympathy And Feeling In Drink.... I Drink So That I May Suffer Twice As Much!

Killing Myself Was A Matter Of Such Indifference To Me That I Felt Like Waiting For A Moment When It Would Make Some Difference.

Since I Wasn't Consulted At The Time Of The Creation Of The World, I Reserve For Myself The Right To Have My Own Opinion About It.

To Love Another Person Is To See Them As God Intended Them To Be.

The Greater The Stupidity, The Greater The Clarity. Stupidity Is Brief And Guileless, While Wit Equivocates And Hides. Wit Is A Scoundrel, While Stupidity Is Honest And Sincere.

I Am Crazy About Mysterious Things.

Mysterious Things

It Is Always So, When We Are Unhappy We Feel More Strongly The Unhappiness Of Others; Our Feeling Is Not Shattered, But Becomes Concentrated.

God Knows What Lives In Me In Place Of Me.

To Be In Love Is Not The Same As Loving. You Can Be In Love With A Woman And Still Hate Her.

Destroy My Desires, Eradicate My Ideals, Show Me Something Better, And I Will Follow You.

Something Better

It’s Not God That I Do Not Accept, You Understand, It Is This World Of God’s, Created By God, That I Do Not Accept And Cannot Agree To Accept.

Happiness Does Not Lie In Happiness, But In The Achievement Of It.

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

It's Not Miracles That Generate Faith, But Faith That Generates Miracles.

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

Man Has Not The Right To Turn Aside And Heed Not What Is Happening In The World Around Him, And This I Maintain On Moral Grounds Of The Highest Order.

A Special Form Of Misery Had Begun To Oppress Him Of Late. There Was Nothing Poignant, Nothing Acute About It; But There Was A Feeling Of Permanence, Of Eternity About It; It Brought A Foretaste Of Hopeless Years Of This Cold Leaden Misery, A Foretaste Of An Eternity "on A Square Yard Of Space.

Faith Does Not, In The Realist, Spring From The Miracle But The Miracle From The Faith.

Only To Live, To Live And Live! Life, Whatever It May Be!

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

Whether One Showed You And Execution Or A Little Finger, You Would Extract An Equally Edifying Thought From Both Of Them, And Would Still Be Content. That's The Way To Get On In Life.

You Are Told A Lot About Your Education, But Some Beautiful, Sacred Memory, Preserved Since Childhood, Is Perhaps The Best Education Of All. If A Man Carries Many Such Memories Into Life With Him, He Is Saved For The Rest Of His Days. And Even If Only One Good Memory Is Left In Our Hearts, It May Also Be The Instrument Of Our Salvation One Day.

At That Point I Ought To Have Gone Away, But A Strange Sensation Rose Up In Me, A Sort Of Defiance Of Fate, A Desire To Challenge It, To Put Out My Tongue At It. I Laid Down The Largest Stake Allowe-four Thousand Gulden-and Lost It. Then, Getting Hot, I Pulled Out All I Had Left, Staked It On The Same Number, And Lost Again, After Which I Walked Away From The Table As Though I Were Stunned. I Could Not Even Grasp What Had Happened To Me.

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

A Just Cause Is Not Ruined By A Few Mistakes.

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.

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

Meaning Of Life

Now I'm Living Out My Life In A Corner, Trying To Console Myself With The Stupid, Useless Excuse That An Intelligent Man Cannot Turn Himself Into Anything, That Only A Fool Can Make Anything He Wants Out Of Himself.

Trifles, Trifles Are What Matter!

Much Unhappiness Has Come Into The World Because Of Bewilderment And Things Left Unsaid.

A Society Should Be Judged Not By How It Treats Its Outstanding Citizens But By How It Treats Its Criminals.

Forgive Me... For My Love -for Ruining You With My Love.

Above All, Don't Lie To Yourself.

Occupy Yourself

To Love Someone Means To See Him As God Intended Him.

It Is Not The Brains That Matter Most, But That Which Guides Them — The Character, The Heart, Generous Qualities, Progressive Ideas.

Talking Nonsense Is Man's Only Privilege That Distinguishes Him From All Other Organisms.

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

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.

He Was One Of The Numerous And Varied Legion Of Dullards, Of Half-animated Abortions, Conceited, Half-educated Coxcombs, Who Attach Themselves To The Idea Most In Fashion Only To Vulgarize It And Who Caricature Every Cause They Serve, However Sincerely.

They Won't Let Me ... I Can't Be ... Good!

When Reason Fails, The Devil Helps!

It Suddenly Seemed To Me That I Was Lonely, That Every One Was Forsaking Me And Going Away From Me. Of Course, Any One Is Entitled To Ask Who "every One" Was. For Though I Had Been Living Almost Eight Years In Petersburg I Had Hardly An Acquaintance. But What Did I Want With Acquaintances? I Was Acquainted With All Petersburg As It Was.

All People Seem To Be Divided Into'ordinary'and 'extraordinary'. The Ordinary People Must Lead A Life Of Strict Obedience And Have No Right To Transgress The Law Because?theyare Ordinary.whereas The Extraordinary People Have The Right To Commit Any Crime They Like And Transgress The Law In Any Way Just Because They Happen To Be Extraordinary.

Ordinary Extraordinary

There Is No Explaining Anything By Reasoning And So It Is Useless To Reason.

One Man Doesn't Believe In God At All, While The Other Believes In Him So Thoroughly That He Prays As He Murders Men!

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

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.

For Men Are Made For Happiness, And Any One Who Is Completely Happy Has A Right To Say To Himself, 'i Am Doing God's Will On Earth.'

It Suddenly Seemed To Me That I Was Lonely, That Everyone Was Forsaking Me And Going Away From Me.

The More I Love Humanity In General, The Less I Love Man In Particular.

Being At A Loss To Resolve These Questions, I Am Resolved To Leave Them Without Any Resolution.

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.

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.

Until You Have Become Really, In Actual Fact, As Brother To Everyone, Brotherhood Will Not Come To Pass.

Accept Suffering And Achieve Atonement Through It — That Is What You Must Do.

Man Is A Creature That Can Get Accustomed To Anything, And I Think That Is The Best Definition Of Him.

Everywhere I Am The Object Of An Unbelievable Esteem, The Interest In Me Is, Quite Simply, Tremendous.

Catch Several Hares And You Won't Catch One.

... You Can Never Be Sure Of What Has Passed Between Husband And Wife Or Lover And Mistress.

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

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Charles Caleb Colton

Chris Hemsworth

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