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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!

-Fyodor Dostoevsky

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Where Is It I've

Fyodor Dostoevsky

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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!

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

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

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

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If God Does Not Exist, Then Everything Is Permissible.

I Want To Suffer And Be Purified By Suffering!

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

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My God, But What Do I Care About The Laws Of Nature And Arithmatic If For Some Reason These Laws And Two Times Two Is Four Are Not To My Liking?

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

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Ordinary Extraordinary

Often A Man Endures For Several Years, Submits And Suffers The Cruellest Punishments, And Then Suddenly Breaks Out Over Some Minute Trifle, Almost Nothing At All.

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!

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

Make Us Your Slaves, But Feed Us.

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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.

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

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

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

Gentlemen, Let Us Suppose That Man Is Not Stupid. (indeed One Cannot Refuse To Suppose That, If Only From The One Consideration, That, If Man Is Stupid, Then Who Is Wise?) But If He Is Not Stupid, He Is Monstrously Ungrateful! Phenomenally Ungrateful. In Fact, I Believe That The Best Definition Of Man Is The Ungrateful Biped.

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.

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

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

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

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The Formula 'two And Two Make Five' Is Not Without Its Attractions.

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

If There Is No God, Then I Am God.

There Is No God

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.

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

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

Existence Alone Had Never Been Enough For Him; He Had Always Wanted More. Perhaps It Was Only From The Force Of His Desires That He Had Regarded Himself As A Man To Whom More Was Permitted Than To Others.

In A Way There's Only A Fine Shade Of Difference Between The Healthy And The Deranged.

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

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

Oh I've Plenty Of Time, My Time Is Entirely My Own.

Be The Sun And All Will See You.

Right Or Wrong, It's Very Pleasant To Break Something From Time To Time.

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

But Men Love Abstract Reasoning And Neat Systematization So Much That They Think Nothing Of Distorting The Truth, Closing Their Eyes And Ears To Contrary Evidence To Preserve Their Logical Constructions.

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.

Equality Lies Only In Human Moral Dignity. ... Let There Be Brothers First, Then There Will Be Brotherhood, And Only Then Will There Be A Fair Sharing Of Goods Among Brothers.

Above All, Avoid Falsehood, Every Kind Of Falsehood, Especially Falseness To Yourself. Watch Over Your Own Deceitfulness And Look Into It Every Hour, Every Minute.

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

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

I Am Too Young And I've Loved You Too Much.

Bad People Are To Be Found Everywhere, But Even Among The Worst There May Be Something Good.

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

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

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.

Love All God’s Creation, Both The Whole And Every Grain Of Sand. Love Every Leaf, Every Ray Of Light. Love The Animals, Love The Plants, Love Each Separate Thing. If Thou Love Each Thing Thou Wilt Perceive The Mystery Of God In All; And When Once Thou Perceive This, Thou Wilt Thenceforward Grow Every Day To A Fuller Understanding Of It: Until Thou Come At Last To Love The Whole World With A Love That Will Then Be All-embracing And Universal.

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

My Soul Bleeds And The Blood Steadily, Silently, Disturbingly Slowly, Swallows Me Whole.

Twice Two Makes Four Seems To Me Simply A Piece Of Insolence. Twice Two Makes Four Is A Pert Coxcomb Who Stands With Arms Akimbo Barring Your Path And Spitting. I Admit That Twice Two Makes Four Is An Excellent Thing, But If We Are To Give Everything Its Due, Twice Two Makes Five Is Sometimes A Very Charming Thing Too.

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.

The Russian Soul Is A Dark Place.

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

Dreams Seem To Be Spurred On Not By Reason But By Desire, Not By The Head But By The Heart, And Yet What Complicated Tricks My Reason Has Played Sometimes In Dreams.

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.

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.

It Seems, In Fact, As Though The Second Half Of A Man's Life Is Made Up Of Nothing, But The Habits He Has Accumulated During The First Half.

To Begin With Unlimited Freedom Is To End With Unlimited Despotism.

Love Life More Than The Meaning Of It?

Brothers Karamazov

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.

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.

Granted I Am A Babbler, A Harmless Vexatious Babbler, Like All Of Us. But What Is To Be Done If The Direct And Sole Vocation Of Every Intelligent Man Is Babble, That Is, The Intentional Pouring Of Water Through A Sieve?

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.

If She Had Ordered Me To Throw Myself Down Then, I Would Have Done It! If She Had Said It Only As A Joke, Said It With Contempt, Spitting On Me--even Then I Would Have Jumped!

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.

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

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.

‎honoured Sir, Poverty Is Not A Vice, That's A True Saying. Yet I Know Too That Drunkeness Is Not A Virtue, And That's Even Truer. But Beggary, Honoured Sir, Beggary Is A Vice. In Poverty You May Still Retain Your Innate Nobility Of Soul, But In Beggary--never--no One. For Beggary A Man Is Not Chased Out Of Human Society With A Stick, He Is Swept Out With A Broom, So As To Make It As Humiliating As Possible; And Quite Right, Too, Forasmuch As In Beggary As I Am Ready To Be The First To Humiliate Myself.

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.

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.

Man Is Stupid, Phenomenally Stupid.

"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."

How Does It Come About That What An Intelligent Man Expresses Is Much Stupider Than What Remains Inside Him?

You Don't Need Free Will To Determine That Twice Two Is Four. That's Not What I Call Free Will

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.

Faith Does Not, In The Realist, Spring From The Miracle But The Miracle From Faith. If The Realist Once Believes, Then He Is Bound By His Very Realism To Admit The Miraculous Also.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Compassion Is The Chief Law Of Human Existence.

Above All, Don't Lie To Yourself. The Man Who Lies To Himself And Listens To His Own Lie Comes To A Point That He Cannot Distinguish The Truth Within Him, Or Around Him, And So Loses All Respect For Himself And For Others. And Having No Respect He Ceases To Love.

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.

What Matters," Said The Prince At Last, "is That You Have A Child's Trusting Nature And Extraordinary Truthfulness. Do You Know That A Great Deal Can Be Forgiven You For That Alone?

...it All, Maybe, Most Likely, Indeed, Might Turn Out For The Best.

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

One Must First Learn To Live Oneself Before One Blames Others.

The Best Way To Keep A Prisoner From Escaping Is To Make Sure He Never Knows He's In Prison.

In Abstract Love Of Humanity One Almost Always Only Loves Oneself.

Humanitarianism

People Talk Sometimes Of A Bestial Cruelty, But That's A Great Injustice And Insult To The Beasts; A Beast Can Never Be So Cruel As A Man, So Artistically Cruel. The Tiger Only Tears And Gnaws, That's All He Can Do. He Would Never Think Of Nailing People By The Ears, Even If He Were Able To Do It.

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

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.

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

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

One Must Love Life Before Loving Its Meaning ... Yes, And When The Love Of Life Disappears, No Meaning Can Console Us.

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.

It Seemed Clear To Me That Life And The World Somehow Depended Upon Me Now. I May Almost Say That The World Now Seemed Created For Me Alone: If I Shot Myself The World Would Cease To Be At Least For Me. I Say Nothing Of Its Being Likely That Nothing Will Exist For Anyone When I Am Gone, And That As Soon As My Consciousness Is Extinguished The Whole World Will Vanish Too And Become Void Like A Phantom , As A Mere Appurtenance Of My Consciousness, For Possibly All This World And All These People Are Only Me Myself.

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.

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.

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

A Man Is No Example For A Woman. It’s A Different Thing.

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.

There Is No Virtue If There Is No Immortality.

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.

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.

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.

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