Great Throughts Treasury

"I invented adventures for myself and made up a life, so as at least to live in some way."

"I just basic thing that does not lie to yourself. It is lying to himself, and is pleased that fools it lies, up so that it becomes unable to see the truth in any position, do not come back to see not only in himself and not with him, which ends Finally, for this reason, the loss of self-respect and respect for others."

"I just said it for the beauty of the style."

"I just wanted to say that the distortion of the ideas and concepts are very common, there is much more general than a particular case, unfortunately."

"I knew one "fighter for an idea" who told me himself that when he was deprived of tobacco in prison, he was so tormented by this deprivation that he almost went and betrayed his "idea," just so that they would give him some tobacco. And such a man says: "I am going to fight for mankind." Well, how far will such a man get, and what is he good for? Perhaps some quick action, but he will not endure for long."

"I know about an actual murder over a watch, it's in all the newspapers now. If a writer had invented it, the critics and connoisseurs of popular life would have shouted at once that it was incredible; but reading it in the newspapers as a fact, you feel that it is precisely from such facts that you learn about Russian reality."

"I know that heart, it is a wild but noble heart… It will bow down before your deed, it thirsts for a great act of love, it will catch fire and resurrect forever. There are souls that in their narrowness blame the whole world. But overwhelm such a soul with mercy, give it love, and it will curse what it has done, for there are so many germs of good in it. The soul will expand and behold how merciful God is, and how beautiful and just people are. He will be horrified, he will be overwhelmed with repentance and the countless debt he must henceforth repay. And then he will not say, 'I am quits,' but will say, 'I am guilty before all people and am the least worthy of all people.'"

"I know that my youth will triumph over everything - every disillusionment, every disgust with life. I’ve asked myself many times whether there is in in the world any despair that would overcome this frantic and perhaps unseemly thirst for life in me, and I've come to the conclusion that there isn't..."

"I know that you don't believe it, but indeed, life will bring you through. You will live it down in time. What you need now is fresh air, fresh air, fresh air!"

"I know that, like many other writers, I have many faults, for I am the first to be dissatisfied with myself… At the moment when I am trying to review my life's work, I often realize with pain that I have literally failed to express one-twentieth part of what I had wanted to, and perhaps could have expressed. The thing that comforts me is the constant hope that one day God will grant me so much inspiration… that I shall be able to express myself more fully, that, in short, I shall express all that is locked in my heart and in my imagination… I cannot help feeling that there is much more hidden in me than I have hitherto been able to express as a writer. And yet, speaking without false modesty, there is a great deal that is true and that came from my heart in what I have expressed already."

"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."

"I know. That there is very true, clear and precise. When man reaches happiness will no longer have the time because you do not need. Very true thought."

"I like them to talk nonsense. That's man's one privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth. I am a man because I err! You can never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen."

"I love humanity, but there is something in myself amazes me: the greater the love of humanity one sentence, lack of love for humans individuals."

"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."

"I love myself-it is the only principle which I admit."

"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."

"I love, I can only love the one I've left behind, stained with my blood when, ungrateful wretch that I am, I extinguished myself and shot myself through the heart. But never, never have I ceased to love that one, and even on the night I parted from him I loved him perhaps more poignantly than ever. We can truly love only with suffering and through suffering! We know not how to love otherwise. We know no other love. I want suffering in order to love. I want and thirst this very minute to kiss , with tears streaming down my cheeks, this one and only I have left behind. I don't want and won't accept any other."

"I maintain that he is in his right mind, and that if he had not been, he would have behaved more cleverly."

"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."

"I may be wicked, but still I gave an onion."

"I mean to say, Krestyan Ivanovich, that I go my own way, a particular way. I'm my own particular man and, as it seems to me, I don't depend on anybody. I also go for walks, Krestyan Ivanovich."

"I mean, the scientific and philosophical refutation of the existence of God has been given up, it no longer occupies at all socialists of today; instead, men are denying with all their might and main the divine creation, the world of God and its meaning. These are the only things which modern civilization finds utter nonsense. I flatter myself with the hope that even in such an abstract theme I have not betrayed realism. The refutation of this (not a direct, not a face to face refutation) will appear in the last word of the dying old monk. - Many critics have reproached me because I generally choose for my novels themes that are not right, are not real, and so on. I, on the contrary, know nothing more real than just these themes."

"I must add, he said in the same equivocally respectful tone, my gratitude to you for the attention with which you have listened to me, for, from my numerous observations, our Liberals are never capable of letting anyone else have a conviction of his own without at once meeting their opponent with abuse or even something worse."

"I must add... my gratitude to you for the attention with which you have listened to me, for, from my numerous observations, our Liberals are never capable of letting anyone else have a conviction of his own without at once meeting their opponent with abuse or even something worse."

"I never got anything, even become evil, could not be beautiful, nor bad, nor scoundrel or hero, even an insect. And now, I will end the existence in my little corner where I try to console myself piously indeed unsuccessful, telling me that an intelligent man cannot ever become anything, and that only the asshole triumphs. Yes, gentlemen, the man of the nineteenth century has a duty to be essentially devoid of character, is morally obliged to do so. The man who has character, the man of action, is an essentially mediocre."

"I never have frustrations. The reason is to wit: Of at first I don't succeed, I quit!"

"I once saw a convict who had been twenty years in prison and was being released take leave of his fellow prisoners. There were men who remembered his first coming into prison, when he was young, careless, heedless of his crime and his punishment. He went out a grey-headed, elderly man, with a sad sullen face. He walked in silence through our six barrack-rooms. As he entered each room he prayed to the ikons, and then bowing low to his fellow prisoners he asked them not to remember evil against him."

"I passed by your lodging just now, and thought: 'I'll go in to him; he is kinder than any of them, and he was there at the time.' Forgive a poor creature who's no use to anyone; i'll go away directly; I'm going."

"I punish myself for my whole life, my whole life I punish."

"I quite understand you. You mean that an innocent lie for the sake of a good joke is harmless, and does not offend the human heart. Some people lie, if you like to put it so, out of pure friendship, in order to amuse their fellows; but when a man makes use of extravagance in order to show his disrespect and to make clear how the intimacy bores him, it is time for a man of honor to break off the said intimacy., and to teach the offender his place."

"I recognize the bug and with all the disparagement, that I cannot understand why everything is so arranged. The people themselves, therefore, are to blame: they were given paradise, they wanted freedom, and stole fire from heaven, knowing yourself, what will become unhappy, so there is nothing to feel sorry for them. Oh, in my opinion, on a miserable, Euclidian earthly mind, I think I know is that suffering is that the perpetrators do not have that all of the other one is right and just that everything is flowing and balanced - but that's only Euclidian game, because I know it well, because to live by it as I cannot agree more! What am I that the perpetrators do not, and that's all right, and just one from the other is, and I know it - I need retribution, because otherwise I will destroy you. And wages are not at infinity somewhere and sometime, but here already on the ground, and that I saw it myself. I believed, and I want to see myself, and if in that hour I will be dead, then let me be resurrected, because if everything happen without me, it would be too sad. Not for that I suffered to them, evil deeds and sufferings of my muck someone's future harmony. I want to see with my own eyes how the deer and the lion will lay down beside a slaughtered stand up and hug with murdering him. I want to be there when all of a sudden finds out what all it was."

"I regard you as one of those men who would stand and smile at their torturer while he cuts their entrails out, if only they have found faith or God. Find it and you will live. You have long needed a change of air. Suffering, too, is a good thing. Suffer! Maybe Nikolay is right in wanting to suffer. I know you don't believe in it—but don't be over-wise; 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. What bank? How can I tell? I only believe that you have long life before you."

"I remember being told of a poor wretch I once knew, who had died of hunger. I was almost beside myself with rage! I believe if I could have resuscitated him I would have done so for the sole purpose of murdering him!"

"I remember once I came into his room alone, when no one was with him. It was a bright evening, the sun was setting and lit up the whole room with its slanting rays. He beckoned when he saw me, I went over to him, he took me by the shoulders with both hands, looked tenderly, lovingly into my face; he did not say anything, he simply looked at me like that for about a minute: "Well," he said, "go now, play, live for me!" I walked out then and went to play."

"I remember that he was always trying to expound to me in his broken Russian some special system of astronomy he had invented. I was told that he had once published it, but the learned world had only laughed at him. I think his wits were a little deranged."

"I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who... prayed.. with... unexpiated tears to 'dear, kind God!"

"I repeat, I repeat with emphasis: all "direct" persons and men of action are active just because they are stupid and limited. How explain that? I will tell you: in consequence of their limitation they take immediate and secondary causes for primary ones, and in that way persuade themselves more quickly and easily than other people do that they have found an infallible foundation for their activity, and their minds are at ease and you know that is the chief thing."

"I repeat, I repeat with emphasis: all direct persons and men of action are active just because they are stupid and limited. How explain that? I will tell you: in consequence of their limitation they take immediate and secondary causes for primary ones and in that way persuade themselves more quickly and easily than other people do that they have found an infallible foundation for their activity, and their minds are at ease and you know that is the chief thing."

"I retraced my steps, walked up to her, and in another moment would have certainly said, "Madam!" if I had not known that that exclamation had been made a thousand times before in all Russian novels of high life. It was that alone that stopped me."

"I saw clear as daylight how strange it is that not a single person living in this mad world has had the daring to go straight for it all and send it flying to the devil! I...I wanted to have the daring...and I killed her."

"I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea."

"I should like to know what people fear the most: whatever is contrary to their usual habits, I imagine."

"I sit up talking till daybreak with the young people and we have almost Athenian evenings, Athenian, I mean, only in their intellectual subtlety and refinement."

"I sometimes arise in classes such misery... Because we are already beginning to do in those classes that means I'm not able to begin to live a real life, because I already felt that I had lost every stroke, every sense of what is right, the real, because after my night fantasizing fend me for classes sobering up that are terrible! And there you hear that roar around you and reels you in living a whirlwind crowd, hear, see how people live, you see that they do not live banned that their lives will not fly apart like a dream, like a display, that their life eternally renewed, the eternally new, and even an hour it is not like the others - and that is sad… fantasy slave shadow, ideas, first cloud, which will suddenly that covered the sun and the grief that gripped right Petrograd heart as much hanging its sun - and even what is fantasy in misery! Feeling that she finally weary, exhausted in perpetual effort that inexhaustible fantasy, because you become and manly, and leave your ideals; scattered in the dust in mrvež, but if you have no other life, you have to build it from that same. And however, the soul prays and wants something else! And in vain dreamer pottering about, as the ashes, the old dream and his search in that ash was kind of spark that renewed the fire warms the heart and lukewarm ing raised everything used to be so sweet, what touches the soul, which is blood, the local inhabitants used the tears from his eyes, and so richly deceived."

"I sometimes have moments of such despair, such despair… Because in those moments I start to think that I will never be capable of beginning to live a real life; because I have already begun to think that I have lost all sense of proportion, all sense of the real and the actual; because, what is more, I have cursed myself; because my nights of fantasy are followed by hideous moments of sobering! And all the time one hears the human crowd swirling and thundering around one in the whirlwind of life, one hears, one sees how people live—that they live in reality, that for them life is not something forbidden, that their lives are not scattered for the winds like dreams or visions but are forever in the process of renewal, forever young, and that no two moments in them are ever the same; while how dreary and monotonous to the point of being vulgar is timorous fantasy, the slave of shadow, of the idea, the slave of the first cloud that covers the sun."

"I sometimes think love consists precisely of the voluntary gift by the loved object of the right to tyrannize over it."

"I speak as a judge and I know that I was guilty. Even in the whirl in which I was caught up, and though I was alone without a guide or counselor, I was, I swear, conscious of my downfall, and so there's no excuse for me. And yet, for those two months I was almost happy -- why, almost? I was quite happy! And so happy -- would it be believed -- that the consciousness of my degradation, of which I had glimpses at moments (frequent moments!) and which made me shudder in my inmost soul, only intoxicated me more. What do I care if I'm fallen! And i won't fall, I'll get out of it! I have a lucky star! I was crossing a precipice on a thin plank without a rail, and I was pleased at my position, and even peeped into the abyss. It was risky and it was delightful. And my idea? My idea later, the idea would wait. Everything that happened was simply a temporary deviation. Why not enjoy oneself? That's what was amiss with my idea. I repeat, it admitted of all sorts of deviations; if it had not been so firm and fundamental I might have been afraid of deviating."

"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."

"I suspect gentlemen, that you're regarding me with pity; you keep repeating to me that an enlightened and cultured man -- such as, in short, as the man of the future will be -- cannot knowingly desire anything unprofitable for himself -- that that's mathematics. I agree totally that it really is mathematics. But I repeat to you for the hundredth time: there is only one case, only one, when a man can intentionally and consciously desire for himself even what is harmful and stupid, even what is extremely stupid: namely, in order to have the right to desire for himself even what is extremely stupid and not be constrained by the obligation to desire for himself only what is intelligent."