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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.

-Fyodor Dostoevsky

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You See, Gentlemen, Reason

Fyodor Dostoevsky

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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.

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It's Curious And Ridiculous How Much The Gaze Of A Prudish And Painfully Chaste Man Touched By Love Can Sometimes Express And That Precisely At A Moment When The Man Would Of Course Sooner Be Glad To Fall Through The Earth Than To Express Anything With A Word Or A Look.

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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.

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Can A Man Of Perception Respect Himself At All?

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Without God All Things Are Permitted.

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.

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When Reason Fails, The Devil Helps!

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

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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

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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.

It Takes Something More Than Intelligence To Act Intelligently.

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You Sensed That You Should Be Following A Different Path, A More Ambitious One, You Felt That You Were Destined For Other Things But You Had No Idea How To Achieve Them And In Your Misery You Began To Hate Everything Around You.

I May Be Mistaken But It Seems To Me That A Man May Be Judged By His Laugh, And That If At First Encounter You Like The Laugh Of A Person Completely Unknown To You, You May Say With Assurance That He Is Good.

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Power Is Given Only To Him Who Dares To Stoop And Take It ... One Must Have The Courage To Dare.

Right Attitudes Produces Right Action

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There Is No Idea, No Fact, Which Could Not Be Vulgarized And Presented In A Ludicrous Light.

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

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

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.

Viper Will Eat Viper, And It Would Serve Them Both Right!

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

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

Beauty Is Mysterious As Well As Terrible. God And Devil Are Fighting There, And The Battlefield Is The Heart Of Man.

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.

Pass Us By, And Forgive Us Our Happiness

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

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

The Degree Of A Nation’s Civilization Can Be Seen In The Way It Treats Its Prisoners

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?

And You're Sorry That The Ephemeral Beauty Has Faded So Rapidly, So Irretrievably, That It Flashed So Deceptively And Pointlessly Before Your Eyes - You're Sorry, For You Didn't Even Have Time To Fall In Love.

Falling In Love

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.

There Is No Object On Earth Which Cannot Be Looked At From A Cosmic Point Of View.

He Who Masters The Grey Everyday Is A Hero.

Of Course Boredom May Lead You To Anything. It Is Boredom Sets One Sticking Golden Pins Into People, But All That Would Not Matter. What Is Bad (this Is My Comment Again) Is That I Dare Say People Will Be Thankful For The Gold Pins Then.

I Go To Spread The Tidings, I Want To Spread The Tidings Of What? Of The Truth , For I Have Seen It, Have Seen It With My Own Eyes , Have Seen It In All Its Glory .

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

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

One Can Tell A Child Everything, Anything. I Have Often Been Struck By The Fact That Parents Know Their Children So Little. They Should Not Conceal So Much From Them. How Well Even Little Children Understand That Their Parents Conceal Things From Them, Because They Consider Them Too Young To Understand! Children Are Capable Of Giving Advice In The Most Important Matters.

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.

But Man Is A Fickle And Disreputable Creature And Perhaps, Like A Chess-player, Is Interested In The Process Of Attaining His Goal Rather Than The Goal Itself.

They Have Succeeded In Accumulating A Greater Mass Of Objects, But The Joy In The World Has Grown Less.

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.

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

A Real Gentleman, Even If He Loses Everything He Owns, Must Show No Emotion. Money Must Be So Far Beneath A Gentleman That It Is Hardly Worth Troubling About.

If You Wish To Glimpse Inside A Human Soul And Get To Know A Man, Don't Bother Analyzing His Ways Of Being Silent, Of Talking, Of Weeping, Of Seeing How Much He Is Moved By Noble Ideas; You Will Get Better Results If You Just Watch Him Laugh. If He Laughs Well, He's A Good Man.

The Consciousness Of Life Is Higher Than Life.

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

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

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.

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

The Greatest Happiness Is To Know The Source Of Unhappiness.

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.

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

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.

Let Us Be Servants In Order To Be Leaders.

In Summer, Intolerable Closeness; In Winter, Unendurable Cold. All The Floors Were Rotten. Filth On The Floors An Inch Thick; One Could Slip And Fall.

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

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.

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."

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.

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.

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

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

Be The Sun And All Will See You.

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.

I Walked Along Nevsky Avenue.actually It Was More Torture, Humiliation, And Bilious Irritation Than A Stroll.

My Friends, Ask Gladness From God. Be Glad As Children, As Birds In The Sky. And Let Man's Sin Not Disturb You In Your Efforts, Do Not Feat That It Will Dampen Your Endeavor And Keep It From Being Fulfilled, Do Not Say, Sin Is Strong, Impiety Is Strong, The Bad Environment Is Strong, And We Are Lonely And Powerless, The Bad Environment Will Dampen Us And Keep Our Good Endeavor From Being Fulfilled. Flee From Such Despondency, My Children! There Is Only One Salvation For You: Take Yourself Up, And Make Yourself Responsible For The Sins Of Men.

.. But Do You Understand, I Cry To Him, Do You Understand That Along With Happiness, In The Exact Same Way, In Perfectly Equal Proportion, Man Also Needs Unhappiness

If You Can Put The Question, 'am I Or Am I Not Responsible For My Acts?' Then You Are Responsible.

The More I Detest Men Individually The More Ardent Becomes My Love For Humanity.

Brothers Karamazov

If You Love Everything, You Will Perceive The Divine Mystery Of Things.

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

If He's Alive, Everything Is In His Power! Whose Fault Is It That He Doesn't Understand That?

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

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.

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

What Does Reason Know? Reason Only Knows What It Has Succeeded In Learning.

Everything Will Come In Due Course, If You Have The Gumption To Wait For It.

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

A Cultivated And Decent Man Cannot Be Vain Without Setting A Fearfully High Standard For Himself, And Without Despising And Almost Hating Himself At Certain Moments.

...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.

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.

Such Power!" Adelaida Cried All At Once, Peering Greedily At The Portrait Over Her Sister's Shoulder. "where? What Power?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna Asked Sharply. "such Beauty Has Power," Adelaida Said Hotly. "you Can Overturn The World With Such Beauty.

To Live Without Hope Is To Cease To Live.

Hoping For The Best

Believe To The End, Even If All Men Went Astray And You Were Left The Only One Faithful; Bring Your Offering Even Then And Praise God In Your Loneliness.

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.

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

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.

Without A Clear Perception Of His Reasons For Living, Man Will Never Consent To Live, And Will Rather Destroy Himself Than Tarry On Earth, Though He Be Surrounded With Bread".

Fathers, Provoke Not Your Children To Wrath.

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

Oh, If Only I Did Nothing Simply As A Result Of Laziness.

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

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

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

Every Man Needs A Place To Go To.

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

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.

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

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.

There Is Not A Thing That Is More Positive Than Bread.

It Is Necessary That Every Man Have At Least Somewhere To Go. For There Are Times When One Absolutely Must Go At Least Somewhere!

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.

And It Is So Simple... The One Thing Is - Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself - That Is The One Thing. That Is All, Nothing Else Is Needed. You Will Instantly Find How To Live.

What Do You Think, Would Not One Tiny Crime Be Wiped Out By Thousands Of Good Deeds?

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.

Lamentations Comfort Only By Lacerating The Heart Still More. Such Grief Does Not Desire Consolation. It Feeds On The Sense Of Its Hopelessness. Lamentations Spring Only From The Constant Craving To Re-open The Wound.

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

I Am A Fool With A Heart But No Brains, And You Are A Fool With Brains But No Heart; And We’re Both Unhappy, And We Both Suffer.

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

But I Always Liked Side-paths, Little Dark Back-alleys Behind The Main Road- There One Finds Adventures And Surprises, And Precious Metal In The Dirt.

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.

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.

In Order To Love Simply, It Is Necessary To Know How To Show Love.

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

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.

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

Catch Several Hares And You Won't Catch One.

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

Don't Think I'm Talking Nonsense Because I'm Drunk. I'm Not A Bit Drunk. Brandy's All Very Well, But I Need Two Bottles To Make Me Drunk.

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