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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.

-Fyodor Dostoevsky

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What Tender And Devoted

Fyodor Dostoevsky

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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.

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The Perpetration Of A Crime Is Accompanied By Illness!

There Is No Virtue If There Is No Immortality.

Man Grows Used To Everything, The Scoundrel!

How Many Ideas Have There Been In The History Of Man Which Were Unthinkable Ten Years Before They Appeared?

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.

If There Is No God, Then I Am God.

There Is No God

What Terrible Tragedies Realism Inflicts On People.

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

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!

Gambling Is A Most Foolish And Imprudent Pursuit.

When Reason Fails, The Devil Helps!

I Sometimes Think Love Consists Precisely Of The Voluntary Gift By The Loved Object Of The Right To Tyrannize Over It.

Wealth Is The Number Of Things One Can Do Without.

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

I Agree That Two And Two Make Four Is An Excellent Thing; But To Give Everything Its Due, Two And Two Make Five Is Also A Very Fine Thing.

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

"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."

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."

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.

Reason And Knowledge Have Always Played A Secondary, Subordinate, Auxiliary Role In The Life Of Peoples, And This Will Always Be The Case. A People Is Shaped And Driven Forward By An Entirely Different Kind Of Force, One Which Commands And Coerces Them And The Origin Of Which Is Obscure And Inexplicable Despite The Reality Of Its Presence.

There Is Something At The Bottom Of Every New Human Thought, Every Thought Of Genius, Or Even Every Earnest Thought That Springs Up In Any Brain, Which Can Never Be Communicated To Others, Even If One Were To Write Volumes About It And Were Explaining One's Idea For Thirty-five Years; There's Something Left Which Cannot Be Induced To Emerge From Your Brain, And Remains With You Forever; And With It You Will Die, Without Communicating To Anyone Perhaps The Most Important Of Your Ideas.

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

Man Is Stupid, Phenomenally Stupid.

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.

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

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.

I Have Seen The Truth. It Is Not As Though I Had Invented It In My Mind. I Have Seen It, Seen It And The Living Image Of It Has Filled My Soul Forever.

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."

If The People Around You Are Spiteful And Callous And Will Not Hear You, Fall Down Before Them And Beg Their Forgiveness; For In Truth You Are To Blame For Their Not Wanting To Hear You.

For All Is Like An Ocean, All Flows And Connects; Touch It In One Place And It Echoes At The Other End Of The World.

Sarcasm: The Last Refuge Of Modest And Chaste-souled People When The Privacy Of Their Soul Is Coarsely And Intrusively Invaded.

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.

I Want To Suffer And Be Purified By Suffering!

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

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.

Be The Sun And All Will See You.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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An Artist Must Know The Reality He Is Depicting In Its Minutest Detail. In My Opinion We Have Only One Shining Example Of That - Count Leo Tolstoy.

I Have A Plan-to Go Mad.

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Therefore, In My Incontrovertible Capacity As Plaintiff And Defendant Judge And Accused, I Condemn This Nature, Which Has So Brazenly And Unceremoniously Inflicted This Suffering... Since I Am Unable To Destroy Nature, I Am Destroying Myself, Solely Out Of Weariness Of Having To Endure A Tyranny In Which There Is No Guilty Party.

The Consciousness Of Life Is Higher Than Life.

Pain And Suffering Are Always Inevitable For A Large Intelligence And A Deep Heart. The Really Great Men Must, I Think, Have Great Sadness On Earth.

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.

How Good Life Is When One Does Something Good And Just!

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This Is My Last Message To You: In Sorrow, Seek Happiness.

You’re A Gentleman,” They Used To Say To Him. “you Shouldn’t Have Gone Murdering People With A Hatchet; That’s No Occupation For A Gentleman.

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?

A Man Who Lies To Himself, And Believes His Own Lies, Becomes Unable To Recognize Truth, Either In Himself Or In Anyone Else, And He Ends Up Losing Respect For Himself And For Others.

You Can't Be Angry With Me, Because I Am A Hundred Times More Severely Punished Than You, If Only By The Fact That I Shall Never See You Again.

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

In Most Cases, People, Even Wicked People, Are Far More Naive And Simple-hearted Than One Generally Assumes. And So Are We.

Only The Heart Knows How To Find What Is Precious.

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

Humanity Can Live Without Science, It Can Live Without Bread, But It Cannot Live Without Beauty. Without Beauty, There Would Be Nothing Left To Do In This Life. Here The Secret Lies. Here Lies The Entire Story.

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Nothing Could Be More Absurd Than Moral Lessons At Such A Moment! Oh, Self-satisfied People: With What Proud Self-satisfaction Such Babblers Are Ready To Utter Their Pronouncements! If They Only Knew To What Degree I Myself Understand All The Loathsomeness Of My Present Condition, They Wouldn't Have The Heart To Teach Me.

[to Jesus] You Did Not Come Down From The Cross When They Shouted To You, Mocking And Reviling You: "come Down From The Cross And We Will Believe That It Is You." You Did Not Come Down Because, Again, You Did Not Want To Enslave Man By A Miracle And Thirsted For Faith That Is Free, Not Miraculous...i Swear, Man Is Created Weaker And Baser Than You Thought Him! How, How Can He Ever Accomplish The Same Things As You? ...respecting Him Less, You Would Have Demanded Less Of Him, And That Would Be Closer To Love, For His Burden Would Be Lighter.

There Is Immeasurably More Left Inside Than What Comes Out In Words.

A Loss For Words

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

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

It Is Not The Real Punishment. The Only Effectual One, The Only Deterrent And Softening One, Lies In The Recognition Of Sin By Conscience.

Oh, Gentlemen, Perhaps I Really Regard Myself As An Intelligent Man Only Because Throughout My Entire Life I've Never Been Able To Start Or Finish Anything. Granted, Granted I'm A Babbler, A Harmless, Irksome Babbler, As We All Are. But What's To Be Done If The Sole And Express Purpose Of Every Intelligent Man Is Babble--that Is, A Deliberate Pouring From Empty Into Void.

Life Had Stepped Into The Place Of Theory.

What Can Become Of Him If He Is In Such Bondage To The Habit Of Satisfying The Innumerable Desires He Has Created For Himself? He Is Isolated, And What Concern Has He With The Rest Of Humanity? They Have Succeeded In Accumulating A Greater Mass Of Objects, But The Joy In The World Has Grown Less.

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

What Would Life Be If We Had No Courage To Attempt Anything? Taking A New Step, Uttering A New Word, Is What People Fear Most.

By Interpreting Freedom As The Propagation And Immediate Gratification Of Needs, People Distort Their Own Nature, For They Engender In Themselves A Multitude Of Pointless And Foolish Desires, Habits, And Incongruous Stratagems. Their Lives Are Motivated Only By Mutual Envy, Sensuality, And Ostentation.

The Russian Soul Is A Dark Place.

If Thou Love Each Thing Thou Wilt Perceive The Mystery Of God In All.

The Fear Of Appearances Is The First Symptom Of Impotence.

It Takes Something More Than Intelligence To Act Intelligently.

Crime And Punishment

...to Return To Their 'native Soil,' As They Say, To The Bosom, So To Speak, Of Their Mother Earth, Like Frightened Children, Yearning To Fall Asleep On The Withered Bosom Of Their Decrepit Mother, And To Sleep There For Ever, Only To Escape The Horrors That Terrify Them.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

After All, I Quite Naturally Want To Live In Order To Fulfill My Whole Capacity For Living, And Not In Order To Fulfill My Reasoning Capacity Alone, Which Is No More Than Some One-twentieth Of My Capacity For Living. 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.

For, After All, You Do Grow Up, You Do Outgrow Your Ideals, Which Turn To Dust And Ashes, Which Are Shattered Into Fragments; And If You Have No Other Life, You Just Have To Build One Up Out Of These Fragments.

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.

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.

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.

And So I Ask Myself: 'where Are Your Dreams?' And I Shake My Head And Mutter: 'how The Years Go By!' And I Ask Myself Again: 'what Have You Done With Those Years? Where Have You Buried Your Best Moments? Have You Really Lived? Look,' I Say To Myself, 'how Cold It Is Becoming All Over The World!' And More Years Will Pass And Behind Them Will Creep Grim Isolation. Tottering Senility Will Come Hobbling, Leaning On A Crutch, And Behind These Will Come Unrelieved Boredom And Despair. The World Of Fancies Will Fade, Dreams Will Wilt And Die And Fall Like Autumn Leaves From The Trees. . . .

And If There's Love, You Can Do Without Happiness Too. Even With Sorrow, Life Is Sweet.

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

Man Is A Creative Animal, Doomed To Strive Toward A Goal, Engaged In Full-time Engineering.

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

The World Says: "you Have Needs - Satisfy Them. You Have As Much Right As The Rich And The Mighty. Don't Hesitate To Satisfy Your Needs; Indeed, Expand Your Needs And Demand More." This Is The Worldly Doctrine Of Today. And They Believe That This Is Freedom. The Result For The Rich Is Isolation And Suicide, For The Poor, Envy And Murder.

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.'

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!

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.

In A Morbid Condition Of The Brain, Dreams Often Have A Singular Actuality, Vividness, And Extraordinary Semblance Of Reality. At Times Monstrous Images Are Created, But The Setting And The Whole Picture Are So Truth-like And Filled With Details So Delicate, So Unexpectedly, But So Artistically Consistent, That The Dreamer, Were He An Artist Like Pushkin Or Turgenev Even, Could Never Have Invented Them In The Waking State. Such Sick Dreams Always Remain Long In The Memory And Make A Powerful Impression On The Overwrought And Deranged Nervous System.

I Tell Thee That Man Is Tormented By No Greater Anxiety Than To Find Someone Quickly To Whom He Can Hand Over That Gift Of Freedom With Which The Ill-fated Creatures Is Born. But Only One Who Can Appease Their Conscience Can Take Over Their Freedom […] Instead Of Taking Men's Freedom From Them, Thou Didst Make It Greater Than Ever! Didst Thou Forget That Man Prefers Peace, And Even Death, To Freedom Of Choice In The Knowledge Of Good And Evil?

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.

Then Christ Will Say To Us, 'come You Also! Come You Drunkards! Come You Weaklings! Come You Depraved!' And He Will Say To Us, 'vile Creatures, You In The Image Of The Beast And You Who Bear His Mark. All The Same, You Come Too!' And The Wise And Prudent Will Say, 'lord, Why Are You Welcoming Them? And He Will Say, 'o Wise And Prudent, I Am Welcoming Them Because Not One Of Them Has Ever Judged Himself Worthy. And He Will Stretch Out His Arms To Us, And We Shall Fall At His Feet, And Burst Into Sobs, And Then We Shall Understand Everything, Everything! Lord, Your Kingdom Come!

Only One Thing Matters, One Thing; To Be Able To Dare!

My God, A Moment Of Bliss. Why, Isn't That Enough For A Whole Lifetime?

Men Like To To Count Their Troubles; Few Calculate Their Happiness.

After All, Bluff And Real Emotion Exist So Easily Side By Side.

Perhaps I Really Regard Myself As An Intelligent Man Only Because Throughout My Entire Life I've Never Been Able To Start Or Finish Anything.

The Death Of A Child Is The Greatest Reason To Doubt The Existence Of God.

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

Every Man Has Some Reminiscences Which He Would Not Tell To Everyone, But Only To His Friends.

Notes From The Underground

My Friends, God Is Necessary For Me If Only Because He Is The One Being Who Can Be Loved Eternally.

Compassion Is The Chief Law Of Human Existence.

At Such Times I Felt Something Was Drawing Me Away, And I Kept Fancying That If I Walked Straight On, Far, Far Away And Reached That Line Where The Sky And Earth Meet, There I Should Find The Key To The Mystery, There I Should See A New Life A Thousand Times Richer And More Turbulent Than Ours.

But Do You Understand, I Cry To Him, Do You Understand That If You Have The Guillotine In The Forefront, And With Such Glee, It's For The Sole Reason That Cutting Heads Off Is The Easiest Thing, And Having An Idea Is Difficult!

Humiliate The Reason And Distort The Soul.

Existentialism Isn't So Atheistic That It Wears Itself Out Showing That God Doesn't Exist. Rather, It Declares That Even If God Did Exist, That Would Change Nothing.

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

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

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.

. . . Finally, I Couldn't Imagine How I Could Live Without Books, And I Stopped Dreaming About Marrying That Chinese Prince. . . .

Luxuries Are Easy To Take Up But Very Difficult To Give Up

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

Reason Is The Slave Of Passion.

On Our Earth We Can Only Love Withsuffering And Through Suffering.

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 Crush, To Annihilate A Man Utterly, To Inflict On Him The Most Terrible Of Punishments So That The Most Ferocious Murderer Would Shudder At It And Dread It Beforehand, One Need Only Give Him Work Of An Absolutely, Completely Useless And Irrational Character.

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.

If Not Reason, Then The Devil.

We All Come Out From Gogol's 'overcoat'.

Russian Literature

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

I Gave Up Caring About Anything, And All The Problems Disappeared. And It Was After That That I Found Out The Truth . I Learnt The Truth Last November On The Third Of November, To Be Precise And I Remember Every Instant Since.

There Are Chance Meetings With Strangers That Interest Us From The First Moment, Before A Word Is Spoken.

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.

The Chief Thing Is To Love Others Like Yourself, That's The Chief Thing, And That's Everything; Nothing Else Is Wanted - You Will Find Out At Once How To Arrange It All.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Don’t Let Us Forget That The Causes Of Human Actions Are Usually Immeasurably More Complex And Varied Than Our Subsequent Explanations Of Them.

Is It Really Not Possible To Touch The Gaming Table Without Being Instantly Infected By Superstition?

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

Human Laziness Makes People Pigeonhole One Another At First Site So That They Find Nothing In Common With One Another.

She Looked Much Younger Than Her Age, Indeed, Which Is Almost Always The Case With Women Who Retain Serenity Of Spirit, Sensitiveness And Pure Sincere Warmth Of Heart To Old Age.

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

Break What Must Be Broken, Once For All, That's All, And Take The Suffering On Oneself.

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

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.

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.

The World Will Be Saved By Beauty.

To Think Too Much Is A Disease.

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

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

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

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

What Is Hell? I Maintain That It Is The Suffering Of Being Unable To Love.

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.

You See, Gentlemen, Reason Is An Excellent Thing, There’s No Disputing That, But Reason Is Nothing But Reason And Satisfies Only The Rational Side Of Man’s Nature, While Will Is A Manifestation Of The Whole Life, That Is, Of The Whole Human Life Including Reason And All The Impulses. And Although Our Life, In This Manifestation Of It, Is Often Worthless, Yet It Is Life And Not Simply Extracting Square Roots.

Whoever Has Experienced The Power And The Unrestrained Ability To Humiliate Another Human Being Automatically Loses His Own Sensations. Tyranny Is A Habit, It Has Its Own Organic Life, It Develops Finally Into A Disease. The Habit Can Kill And Coarsen The Very Best Man Or Woman To The Level Of A Beast. Blood And Power Intoxicate ... The Return Of The Human Dignity, Repentance And Regeneration Becomes Almost Impossible.

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

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

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.

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.

The Man Who Is Happy Is Fulfilling The Purpose Of Existence

Where Is It I've Read That Someone Condemned To Death Says Or Thinks, An Hour Before His Death, That If He Had To Live On Some High Rock, On Such A Narrow Ledge That He'd Only Room To Stand, And The Ocean, Everlasting Darkness, Everlasting Solitude, Everlasting Tempest Around Him, If He Had To Remain Standing On A Square Yard Of Space All His Life, A Thousand Years, Eternity, It Were Better To Live So Than To Die At Once. Only To Live, To Live And Live! Life, Whatever It May Be!

A Single Day Is Sufficient For A Man To Discover What Happiness Is.

Remember That You Must Never Sell Your Soul. Never Accept Payment In Advance.... Never Give A Work To The Printer Before It Is Finished. This Is The Worst Thing You Can Do.... It Constitutes The Murder Of Your Own Ideas.

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.

..., Twice Two Is Four Is Not Life, Gentlemen, But The Beginning Of Death.

But Gamblers Know How A Man Can Sit For Almost Twenty-four Hours At Cards, Without Looking To Right, Or To Left.

We're Always Thinking Of Eternity As An Idea That Cannot Be Understood, Something Immense. But Why Must It Be? What If, Instead Of All This, You Suddenly Find Just A Little Room There, Something Like A Village Bath-house, Grimy, And Spiders In Every Corner, And That's All Eternity Is. Sometimes, You Know, I Can't Help Feeling That That's What It Is.

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

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

The World Stands On Absurdities, And Without Them Perhaps Nothing At All Would Happen.

If Man Has One Good Memory To Go By, That May Be Enough To Save Him.

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 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.

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.

There Is No Subject So Old That Something New Cannot Be Said About It.

New Relationship

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

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.

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.

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

My Life Is Ending, I Know That Well, But Every Day That Is Left Me I Feel How My Earthly Life Is In Touch With A New Infinite, Unknown, But Approaching Life, The Nearness Of Which Sets My Soul Quivering With Rapture, My Mind Glowing And My Heart Weeping With Joy.

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.

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

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.

Filled With Rapture, His Soul Yearned For Freedom, Space, Vastness. Over Him The Heavenly Dome, Full Of Quiet, Shining Stars, Hung Boundlessly. From The Zenith To The Horizon The Still-dim Milky Way Stretched Its Double Strand. Night, Fresh And Quiet, Almost Unstirring, Enveloped The Earth. The White Towers And Golden Domes Of The Church Gleamed In The Sapphire Sky. The Luxuriant Autumn Asleep Till Morning. The Silence Of The Earth Seemed To Merge With The Silence Of The Heavens And The Mystery Of The Earth Touched The Mystery Of The Stars.

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

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.

A Man Who Lies To Himself, And Believes His Own Lies Becomes Unable To Recognize Truth, Either In Himself Or In Anyone Else, And He Ends Up Losing Respect For Himself And For Others. When He Has No Respect For Anyone, He Can No Longer Love, And, In Order To Divert Himself, Having No Love In Him, He Yields To His Impulses, Indulges In The Lowest Forms Of Pleasure, And Behaves In The End Like An Animal. And It All Comes From Lying - Lying To Others And To Yourself.

Nothing Has Ever Been More Insupportable For A Man And A Human Society Than Freedom. –the Grand Inquisitor

Everything Seems Stupid When It Fails.

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

There Is No God

Russians Alone Are Able To Combine So Many Opposites In Themselves At One And The Same Time.

Beauty Would Save The World.

It's The Moon That Makes It So Still, Weaving Some Mystery.

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