Great Throughts Treasury

"In dreams you sometimes fall from a height, or are stabbed, or beaten, but you never feel pain unless, perhaps, you really bruise yourself against the bedstead, then you feel pain and almost always wake up from it. It was the same in my dream. I did not feel any pain, but it seemed as though with my shot everything within me was shaken and everything was suddenly dimmed, and it grew horribly black around me. I seemed to be blinded, and it benumbed, and I was lying on something hard, stretched on my back; I saw nothing, and could not make the slightest movement."

"In every idea emanating from genius, or even in every serious human idea -- born in the human brain -- there always remains something -- some sediment -- which cannot be expressed to others, though one wrote volumes and lectured upon it for five-and-thirty years. There is always a something, a remnant, which will never come out from your brain, but will remain there with you, and you alone, forever and ever, and you will die, perhaps, without having imparted what may be the very essence of your idea to a single living soul."

"In everything there is a trait beyond which it is dangerous to pass, and once passed, it is impossible now to go back."

"In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped."

"In fact, it is not annoying, as, for example, wealthy, respectable family, decent appearance, not bad educated, not stupid, even kind, and at the same time do not have any talent, no features, not even the eccentricities of any of its own ideas, to be determined as everyone else. Wealth is, but not Rotshildovo; surname honest, but nothing ever himself was not marked, decent appearance, but very few express, decent education, but you do not know what to use it, the mind is there, but without the ideas and the heart is, but without generosity, and so on and so on in all respects. Such people in the world of emergency and many even much more than it seems, and they are divided, like all people, for two main categories: one limited, others are much smarter. First happier. Limited ordinary person does not, for example, nothing is easier than to imagine himself a man of unusual and original, and will delight those without any hesitation. As soon as some of our young ladies to cut their hair, put on blue glasses and named the nihilists to immediately verify that, wearing glasses, they immediately began to have their own beliefs. Worth another drop of just feel in my heart something out of some universal and good sense to immediately make sure that no one really does not feel like it, that he advanced in the overall development. As soon as another word to take any thought or read a page of something without beginning or end, to immediately believe that it is his own thoughts, and in his own brain originated. Chutzpah innocence, so to speak, in such cases comes to surprising, and all this is incredible, but occurs every minute... Smart ordinary people, even if only in passing, and imagined myself (and probably in all my life) a man of genius and originality, yet keeps in his heart worm of doubt, which leads up to the fact that a smart man ends sometimes utter despair, but if and submits, it is a completely poisoned drove inside the vanity... In the vast majority of this clever bit of people it happens at all so tragic, really spoils the end of the year the liver, more or less, that's all."

"In fact, that night could not think long and staring at nothing, concentrate the mind on anything, nor could solve, then consciously, whatever it was, the only thing he did was feel. Instead of dialectics arose life, and his conscience was supposed to draw something completely different."

"In many strong people there seems to be a sort of natural need--to find someone or something to bow down to"

"In most cases, people, even evil-doers, are much simpler and more nave than we generally suppose. And the same is true of you and me."

"In most cases, people, even the most vicious, are much more naive and simple-minded than we assume them to be. And this is true of ourselves too."

"In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we."

"In my opinion miracles will never confound a realist. It is not miracles that bring a realist to faith. A true realist, if he is not a believer, will always find in himself the strength and ability not to believe in miracles as well, and if a miracle stands before him as an irrefutable fact, he will sooner doubt his own senses than admit the fact. And even if he does admit it, he will admit it as a fact of nature that was previously unknown to him. In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith. Once the realist comes to believe, then, precisely because of his realism, he must also allow for miracles. The Apostle Thomas declared that he would not believe until he saw, and when he saw, he said: My Lord and My God! Was it the miracle that made him believe? Most likely not, but he believed first and foremost because he wished to believe, and maybe already fully believed in his secret heart even as he was saying: I will not believe until I see."

"In our country, everything is so lazy born handicapped, or even things."

"In place of dialectics, life had arrived."

"In place of the clear and rigid ancient law, You [oh Lord] made man decide about good and evil for himself, with no other guidance than Your example. But did it never occur to You that man would disregard Your example, even question it, as well as Your truth, when he was subjected to so fearful a burden as freedom of choice?"

"In Russia, drunks are our kindest people. Our kindest people are also the most drunk."

"In scattering the seed, scattering your 'charity,' your kind deeds, you are giving away, in one form or antoher, part of your personality, and taking into yourself part of another; you are in mutual communion with one another, a little more attention and you will be rewarded with the knowledge of the most unexpected discoveries. You will come at last to look upon your work as a science; it will lay hold of all your life, and may fill up your whole life. On the other hand, all your thoughts, all the seeds scattered by you, perhaps forgotten by you, will grow up and take form. He who has received them from you will hand them on to another. And how can you tell what part you may have in the future determination of the destinies of humanity?"

"In short, the right given to one man to inflict corporal punishment on another is one of the ulcers of society, one of the most powerful destructive agents of every germ and every budding attempt at civilization, the fundamental cause of its certain and irretrievable destruction."

"In sinning, each man sins against all, and each man is at least partly guilt for another's sin. There is no isolated sin."

"In spite of a bad situation where you could not otherwise have time for it, and then more insatiable taste of faith to understand that even though you would not want the change."

"In spite of the momentary desire he had just been feeling for company of any sort, on being actually spoken to he felt immediately his habitual irritable and uneasy aversion for any stranger who approached or attempted to approach him."

"In such cases, 'we overcome our moral feeling if necessary', freedom, peace, conscience even, all, all are brought into the market."

"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."

"In the Apocalypse the angel swears that there will be no time."

"In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us."

"In the end, you feel that your much-vaunted, inexhaustible fantasy is growing tired, debilitated, exhausted, because you're bound to grow out of your old ideals; they're smashed to splinters and turn to dust, and if you have no other life, you have no choice but to keep rebuilding your dreams from the splinters and dust. But the heart longs for something different! And it is vain to dig in the ashes of your old fancies, trying to find even a tiny spark to fan into a new flame that will warm the chilled heart and bring back to life everything that can send the blood rushing wildly through the body, fill the eyes with tears--everything that can delude you so well!"

"In the first place I spent most of my time at home, reading. I tried to stifle all that was continually seething within me by means of external impressions. And the only external means I had was reading. Reading, of course, was a great help--exciting me, giving me pleasure and pain. But at times it bored me fearfully. One longed for movement in spite of everything, and I plunged all at once into dark, underground, loathsome vice of the pettiest kind. My wretched passions were acute, smarting, from my continual, sickly irritability I had hysterical impulses, with tears and convulsions. I had no resource except reading, that is, there was nothing in my surroundings which I could respect and which attracted me. I was overwhelmed with depression, too; I had an hysterical craving for incongruity and for contrast, and so I took to vice. I have not said all this to justify myself... But, no! I am lying. I did want to justify myself. I make that little observation for my own benefit, gentlemen. I don't want to lie. I vowed to myself I would not."

"In the first place, what is liberalism, speaking generally, but an attack (whether mistaken or reasonable, is quite another question) upon the existing order of things? Is this so? Yes. Very well. Then my 'fact' consists in this, that RUSSIAN liberalism is not an attack upon the existing order of things, but an attack upon the very essence of things themselves--indeed, on the things themselves; not an attack on the Russian order of things, but on Russia itself. My Russian liberal goes so far as to reject Russia; that is, he hates and strikes his own mother. Every misfortune and mishap of the mother-country fills him with mirth, and even with ecstasy. He hates the national customs, Russian history, and everything. If he has a justification, it is that he does not know what he is doing, and believes that his hatred of Russia is the grandest and most profitable kind of liberalism. (You will often find a liberal who is applauded and esteemed by his fellows, but who is in reality the dreariest, blindest, dullest of conservatives, and is not aware of the fact.) This hatred for Russia has been mistaken by some of our 'Russian liberals' for sincere love of their country, and they boast that they see better than their neighbors what real love of one's country should consist in. But of late they have grown, more candid and are ashamed of the expression 'love of country,' and have annihilated the very spirit of the words as something injurious and petty and undignified. This is the truth, and I hold by it; but at the same time it is a phenomenon which has not been repeated at any other time or place; and therefore, though I hold to it as a fact, yet I recognize that it is an accidental phenomenon, and may likely enough pass away. There can be no such thing anywhere else as a liberal who really hates his country; and how is this fact to be explained among US? By my original statement that a Russian liberal is NOT a RUSSIAN liberal--that's the only explanation that I can see."

"In the foreground pulled logic, but it is associated with boredom."

"In the newspapers I read a biography about an American. He left his whole huge fortune to factories and for the positive sciences, his skeleton to the students at the academy there, and his skin to make a drum so as to have the American national anthem drummed on it day and night."

"In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith."

"In the world there is nothing more difficult than frankness and easier than flattery. If honesty has at least one hundredth note falseness immediately dissonance occurs, followed scandal. And even in the flattery everything until the last note is false, then it is nice to hear and not without pleasure, though with roughly fun, but still fun. And as is butter, it always seems at least half true. -"

"In vain many now teach and preach that a single good deed does not mean anything."

"In wine is truth, and the truth had all come out, "that is, all the uncleanness of his coarse and envious heart"!"

"Indeed, in our country, and in all classes, there are, and always will be, strange easy-going people whose destiny it is to remain always beggars. They are poor devils all their lives; quite broken down, they remain under the domination or guardianship of someone, generally a prodigal, or a man who has suddenly made his fortune. All initiative is for them an insupportable burden. They only exist on condition of undertaking nothing for themselves, and by serving, always living under the will of another. They are destined to act by and through others. Under no circumstances, even of the most unexpected kind, can they get rich; they are always beggars. I have met these persons in all classes of society, in all coteries, in all associations, including the literary world."

"Indeed, people speak sometimes about the ‘animal’ cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to animals, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel"

"Indeed, precious memories may remain even of a bad home, if only the heart knows how to find what is precious."

"Instead of giving a firm foundation for setting the conscience of man at rest forever, Thou didst choose all that is exceptional, vague and enigmatic."

"Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely."

"Inventors and geniuses are almost always at the beginning of his pursuits (and very often at the end) were considered in society as a fool - that's the most routine observation, too well-known to all."

"Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also."

"Is it not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?"

"Is it possible that I've suffered so that I, together with my evil deeds and sufferings, should be manure for someone's future harmony? I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion, and the murdered man rise up and embrace his murderer."

"Is it really not possible to touch the gaming table without being instantly infected by superstition?"

"Is it true that you insisted you knew no difference in beauty between some brutal sensual stunt and any great deed, even the sacrifice of life for mankind? Is it true that you found a coincidence in beauty, a sameness of pleasure at both poles? ...You married out of a passion for torture, out of a passion for remorse, out of moral sensuality."

"Is it true, as the religion that rise from the dead, that we will see each other, we will see them all?."

"Is it true, prince, that you once declared that "beauty would save the world"? Great Heaven! The prince says that beauty saves the world! And I declare that he only has such playful ideas because he's in love! Gentlemen, the prince is in love. I guessed it the moment he came in. Don't blush, prince; you make me sorry for you. What beauty saves the world? Colia told me that you are a zealous Christian; is it so? Colia says you call yourself a Christian. 'The prince regarded him attentively, but said nothing."

"Is the nature of men such, that they can reject miracle, and at the great moments of their life, the moments of their deepest, most agonizing spiritual difficulties, cling only to the free verdict of the heart? Oh, Thou didst know that Thy deed would be recorded in books, would be handed down to remote times and the utmost ends of the earth, and Thou didst hope that man, following Thee, would cling to God and not ask for a miracle. But Thou didst not know that when man rejects miracle he rejects God too; for man seeks not so much God as the miraculous. And as man cannot bear to be without the miraculous, he will create new miracles of his own for himself, and will worship deeds of sorcery and witchcraft, though he might be a hundred times over a rebel, heretic and infidel."

"Is there a living man in the country?" cried the Russian hero. I cry the same, though I am not a hero, and no one answers my cry."

"Is there anything more seductive and also more painful for the man free will?"

"Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in Sodom. Did you know that secret? The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man."