Great Throughts Treasury

"I swear to you gentlemen, that to be overly conscious is a sickness, a real, thorough sickness."

"I swear to you that to think too much is a disease, a real, actual disease."

"I swear to you, sirs, that excessive consciousness is a disease--a genuine, absolute disease."

"I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness - a real thorough-going illness."

"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 creature is born"

"I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness- a real thorough-going illness."

"I tell you that man has no more tormenting care than to find someone to whom he can hand over as quickly as possible that gift of freedom with which the miserable creature is born. But he alone can take over the freedom of men who appeases their conscience. With bread you were given an indisputable banner: give man bread and he will bow down to you, for there is nothing more indisputable than bread. But if at the same time someone else takes over his conscience - oh, then he will even throw down your bread and follow him who has seduced his conscience. In this you were right. For the mystery of man's being is not only in living, but in what one lives for. Without a firm idea of what he lives for, man will not consent to live and will sooner destroy himself than remain on earth, even if there is bread all around him. That is so, but what came of it? Instead of taking over men's freedom, you increased it still more for them! Did you forget that peace and even death are dearer to man than free choice in the knowledge of good and evil? There is nothing more seductive for man than the freedom of his conscience, but there is nothing more tormenting either. And so, instead of a firm foundation for appeasing human conscience once and for all, you chose everything that was unusual, enigmatic, and indefinite, you chose everything that was beyond men's strength, and thereby acted as if you did not love them at all - and who did this? He who came to give his life for them! Instead of taking over men's freedom, you increased it and forever burdened the kingdom of the human soul with its torments. You desired the free love of man, that he should follow you freely. Seduced and captivated by you. Instead of the firm ancient law, men had henceforth to decide for himself, with a free heart, what is good and what is evil, having only your image before him as a guide - but did it not occur to you that he would eventually reject and dispute even your image and your truth if he was oppressed by so terrible a burden as freedom of choice? They will finally cry out that the truth is not in you, for it was impossible to leave them in greater confusion and torment than you did, abandoning them to so many cares and insoluble problems. Thus you yourself laid the foundation for the destruction of your own kingdom, and do not blame anyone else for it."

"I tell you, sir, it's very easy for Pyotr Stepanovich to live in the world, because he imagines a man and then lives with him the way he imagined him."

"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."

"I think everyone must love life more than anything else in the world.' 'Love life more than the meaning of it?' 'Yes, certainly. Love it regardless of logic, as you say. Yes, most certainly regardless of logic, for only then will I grasp its meaning. That's what I've been vaguely aware of for a long time. Half your work is done, Ivan: you love life. Now you must try to do the second half and you are saved."

"I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, 'I exist.' In thousands of agonies -- I exist. I'm tormented on the rack -- but I exist! Though I sit alone in a pillar -- I exist! I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there."

"I think man will never renounce real suffering, that is destruction and chaos. Why, suffering is the sole origin of consciousness."

"I think my liver hurts."

"I think so, when a man laughs, cannot be seen with the eye! Laughter that makes it significant human vulgarity, the note something humiliating, even though the person who ever doubted this. That either does not know this: what expresses our faces when we sleep? Someone wisely said, expresses another platitude, to idiocy, a third when you sleep, it seems ridiculous. I do not know that it comes what I wanted to say is that as in the first case and in the second person knows nothing. There are many who do not know how to laugh, even though I knew hate to come here to work, is the gift of laughter, as you do not regulate. Something even arrives, sweeping inside bad instincts, but few. Many shows itself in my hand as laughter. But to me the most wise laughter is disgusting. I guess the first requirement to be properly laughter is being honest. But where to find the people? Provides genuine laughter defeating evil, but why is it easy? Therefore, people often laugh with malice. When accompanied by sincerity and deprived of evil, comes the joyful laughter, sweet, but where he finds joy and sweetness of the people? That being happy is the most prominent feature of man! But it so happens, and not a few tries to puzzle it reaches a character and can dispense, man enough to laugh, and his character as the open palm of the hand. Obviously, when the laughter is sincere. The man knows how to laugh with bonhomie only when there lumturuese march. I'm not talking about the level of mental development of man, speak to the unfolding of his character through the laughter, the totality of characteristics as a man. Neither silence nor crying, neither speaking nor the emotional noble actions of others can fail to show man as displays of laughter. Good laugh, that is good! In fall to the eye was even a gram of madness in another laughter, aware, this man one has to emphasize personal dignity. Even this: one of nature is highly communicable, but you seem somewhat trivial until released the behavior of people, aware that nature is vulgar, in case you flaring something in his noble behavior, unaware that pretends o, o has borrowed from others. The man with the passage of time has changed for the worse!"

"I think that if one is faced by inevitable destruction -- if a house is falling upon you, for instance -- one must feel a great longing to sit down, close one's eyes and wait, come what may."

"I think thus of Satan's pride: it is difficult for us on earth to comprehend it, and therefore, how easy it is to fall into error and partake of it, thinking, moreover, that we are doing something great and beautiful."

"I think we should love life above all. Love life, rather than the meaning of life?"

"I understand solidarity in sin among men; solidarity in retribution I also understand; but what solidarity in sin do little children have? ...And if the suffering of children goes to make up the sum of suffering needed to buy truth, then I assert beforehand that the whole of truth is not worth such a price."

"I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: 'Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.' When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, 'Thou art just, O Lord!' then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can't accept that harmony."

"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."

"I used to imagine adventures for myself, I invented a life, so that I could at least exist somehow."

"I utter what you would not dare think"

"I want peace; yes, I'd sell the whole world for a farthing, straight off, so long as I was left in peace. Is the world to go to pot, or am I to go without my tea? I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I always get my tea. Did you know that, or not? Well, anyway, I know that I am a blackguard, a scoundrel, an egoist, a sluggard."

"I want to attempt a thing like that and am frightened by these trifles, he thought, with an odd smile. Hm … yes, all is in a man's hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that's an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most… . But I am talking too much. It's because I chatter that I do nothing. Or perhaps it is that I chatter because I do nothing. I've learned to chatter this last month, lying for days together in my den thinking … of Jack the Giant."

"I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built by this longing, and I am a believer."

"I want to live, and live even contrary to the logic of things. Let's not have a strong belief in the rules accepted by all, but more like leaves of newly hatched, I love the blue sky, is someone like me without cause. I like the heroism of the people, to which perhaps does not believe any longer."

"I want to suffer and be purified by suffering!"

"I want to suffer so that I may love."

"I want to travel in Europe, Alyosha, I shall set off from here. And yet I know that I am only going to a graveyard, but it's a most precious graveyard, that's what it is! Precious are the dead that lie there, every stone over them speaks of such burning life in the past, of such passionate faith in their work, their truth, their struggle and their science, that I know I shall fall on the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them; though I'm convinced in my heart that it's long been nothing but a graveyard."

"I wanted to fathom her secrets; I wanted her to come to me and say: I love you, and if not that, if that was senseless insanity, then...well, what was there to care about? Did I know what I wanted? I was like one demented: all I wanted was to be near her, in the halo of her glory, in her radiance, always, forever, all my life. I knew nothing more!"

"I wanted to find out then and quickly whether I was a louse like everybody else or a man. Whether I can step over barriers or not, whether I dare stoop to pick up or not, whether I am a trembling creature or whether I have the right."

"I wanted to pray for an hour, but I keep thinking and thinking, and always sick thoughts, and my head aches - what is the use of praying? - It's only a sin! It is strange, too, that I am not sleepy: in great, too great sorrow, after the first outbursts one is always sleepy. Men condemned to death, they say, sleep very soundly on the last night. And so it must be, it si the law of nature, otherwise their strength would not hold out... I lay down on the sofa but I did not sleep."

"I was finally roused from this gloomy state, I remember, one evening on reaching Switzerland at Bale, and I was roused by the bray of an ass in the market-place. I was immensely struck with the ass, and for some reason extraordinarily pleased with it, and suddenly everything seemed to clear up in my head."

"I was lying when I said just now that I was a spiteful official. I was lying from spite."

"I was a coward and a slave. I say this without the slightest embarrassment. Every decent man of our age must be a coward and a slave."

"I was seeking within myself the human being I had so long lost sight of, hoping that my passion had only been distorted but had never been completely suppressed, by the social illusion, by the dominant ideal of “concealing emotions”. I wished to shout: “I broke away from your cold and petrified world in which I was one of the wheels running noiselessly in the great machine, one of the idle wheels. I have plunged into an unknown abyss; and in this one hour of the plunge I have lived more fully than in all sheltered years in your circle. I do not belong to you anymore, I may be on the heights or in the depths, but never shall I return to the dead levels of your philistine comfort."

"I was twenty-four, but even then I led the gloomy, disorganized, solitary existence of a recluse. I stayed away from people, avoided even speaking to them, and kept more and more to my hole."

"I will put up with any mockery rather than pretend that I am satisfied when I am hungry."

"I will tell you another thing that would be better, and that is, if I myself believe even an iota of what I have just written. I swear to you, gentlemen, that I do not really believe one thing, not even one word, of what I have just written. That is, I believe it, perhaps, but at the same time, I feel suspect that I am lying myself blue in the face."

"I wonder in the name of the holy truth itself: why women created for happiness decision of fate, since they are in the wombs of their mothers, while the other women they see the light at the orphanages"

"I worship her, Alyosha, worship her. Only she doesn't see it. No, she still thinks I don't love her enough. And she tortures me, tortures me with her love. The past was nothing! In the past it was only that infernal body of hers that tortured me, but now I've taken all her soul into my soul and through her I've become a man. Will they marry us? If they don't I will die of jealousy. I imagine something every day..."

"I would feel in my soul that you had polluted fashion that disease called atheism."

"I would like to penetrate his secret, I would like you to come up to me and says, 'I love you, and if so, if this madness is not feasible, then... So what you want? I think I know myself what I want? I too am as lost: I just want to be near her, to be in his aura, in his light, eternally, for a lifetime. Others do not know! I could probably get away from her?"

"I’ve always been struck by how little adults understand children, even their own fathers and mothers. Nothing should be kept from children on the pretext that they’re little and it’s too soon for them to know. Such a sad, wretched idea! Children themselves are well aware that their parents regard them as too small and uncomprehending, when actually they understand everything. Adults don’t realize that children can give extremely valuable advice in the most difficult situations. Heavens! When that pretty little bird looks at you, so happy and trusting, you are ashamed to betray it!"

"If anyone, even a small one, of those that do not disturb the water, was not felt anyone with neck fall, living with the fear of God, but also with fear for myself, not going to mind that so annoy the person or it will not haunt him, will leave him alone in his misery, others did not want prying into everyday life that does not has to speak Enda has new or old vest, we no new or patchwork boots, Enda has not agreed to take others beyond her eating, what I wrote? ... What's wrong somewhat, dear heart, that I, when I see the broken carriageway, walk on your toes, tread carefully to maintain boots? Why should you ever written for another no money even to drink a glass of tea? If Genka stamped and said that people, as are all, of course should drink tea. But why qenka appropriate now see another mouth to know cope is by chewing? A man so insulted? No, my soul! Why the hurry when he insulted another featureless doing?"

"If everything on earth were rational, nothing would happen."

"If God does not exist, everything is permissible."

"If he's alive he has everything in his power! Whose fault is it he doesn't understand that."

"If he's honest, he'll steal; if he's human, he'll murder; if he's faithful, he'll deceive."

"If humanity without exception, once renounce God... it is in itself, without cannibalism, will fall all the old belief, and above all, all the old morality, and everything will be new. People unite to take from life all that it can give the happiness and joy in only one world, in this world. Man ascend to the divine, titanic pride and show up a man-god. Constantly beating nature, has no boundaries, and learning prefer their man will feel this pleasure so exalted that he is completely replace the old hope of blue joy. Everyone will know that he is mortal and not to mention the resurrection, will welcome death proudly and calmly as God. Comprehend the pride of his, that there is nothing to grumble that life is only a little while ago and love his brother has no self-interest to pay. Love will be performing only a brief moment of life, but the same sense of temporariness strengthen its fire infinitely stronger than today, when the melt in the hopes of love and infinite afterlife ..."