Great Throughts Treasury

"Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don't want harmony. From love for humanity I don't want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it's beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket."

"Is there suffering on this new earth? On our earth 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."

"Is this what is called remorse of conscience or repentance? I do not know, and I cannot tell to this day. Perhaps this remembrance even now contains something pleasurable for my passions. No--what is unbearable to me is only this image alone, and precisely on the threshold, with its raised and threatening little fist, only that look alone, only that minute alone, only that shaking head. This is what I cannot bear, because since then it appears to me almost every day. It does not appear on its own, but I myself evoke it, and cannot help evoking it, even though I cannot live with it."

"It all, maybe, most likely, indeed, might turn out for the best."

"It happens to meet people, totally unknown to us, we begin to affect at first glance, so to speak all at once, before they said a word."

"It is a law of nature that every decent man on earth is bound to be a coward and a slave."

"It is a year and eight months since I last looked at these notes of mine. I do so now only because, being overwhelmed with depression, I wish to distract my mind by reading them through at random. I left them off at the point where I was just going to Homburg. My God, with what a light heart (comparatively speaking) did I write the concluding lines!—though it may be not so much with a light heart, as with a measure of self-confidence and unquenchable hope. At that time had I any doubts of myself? Yet behold me now. Scarcely a year and a half have passed, yet I am in a worse position than the meanest beggar. But what is a beggar? A fig for beggary! I have ruined myself—that is all. Nor is there anything with which I can compare myself; there is no moral which it would be of any use for you to read to me. At the present moment nothing could well be more incongruous than a moral. Oh, you self-satisfied persons who, in your unctuous pride, are forever ready to mouth your maxims—if only you knew how fully I myself comprehend the sordidness of my present state, you would not trouble to wag your tongues at me! What could you say to me that I do not already know? Well, wherein lies my difficulty? It lies in the fact that by a single turn of a roulette wheel everything for me, has become changed. Yet, had things befallen otherwise, these moralists would have been among the first (yes, I feel persuaded of it) to approach me with friendly jests and congratulations. Yes, they would never have turned from me as they are doing now! A fig for all of them! What am I? I am zero—nothing. What shall I be tomorrow? I may be risen from the dead, and have begun life anew. For still, I may discover the man in myself, if only my manhood has not become utterly shattered."

"It is always so, when we are unhappy we feel more strongly the unhappiness of others; our feeling is not shattered, but becomes concentrated."

"It is amazing what one ray of sunshine can do for a man!"

"It is an unchristian religion, in the first place!' the prince resumed in great agitation and with excessive sharpness. 'That's in the first place, and secondly, Roman Catholicism is even worse than atheism - that's my opinion. Yes, that's my opinion! Atheism merely preaches a negation, but Catholicism goes further: it preaches a distorted Christ, a Christ calumniated and defamed by it, the opposite of Christ! It preaches Antichrist - I swear it does, I assure you it does! This is my personal opinion, an opinion I've held for a long time, and it has worried me a lot myself. ... Roman Catholicism believes that the Church cannot exist on earth without universal temporal power, and cries: Non possumus! In my opinion, Roman Catholicism isn't even a religion, but most decidedly a continuation of the Holy Roman Empire, and everything in it is subordinated to that idea, beginning with faith. The Pope seized the earth, an earthly throne and took up the sword; and since then everything has gone on in the same way, except that they've added lies, fraud, deceit, fanaticism, superstition wickedness. They have trifled with the most sacred, truthful, innocent, ardent feelings of the people, have bartered it all for money, for base temporal power. And isn't this the teaching of Antichrist? Isn't it clear that atheism had to come from them? And it did come from them, from Roman Catholicism itself! Atheism originated first of all with them: how could they believe in themselves? It gained ground because of abhorrence of them; it is the child of their lies and their spiritual impotence! Atheism! In our country it is only the upper classes who do not believe, as Mr Radomsky so splendidly put it the other day, for they have lost their roots. But in Europe vast numbers of the common people are beginning to lose their faith - at first from darkness and lies, and now from fanaticism, hatred of the Church and Christianity!"

"It is better to be unhappy and know than to be happy and live in ignorance."

"It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise."

"It is consistent to me a lot during the impulsive in my dreams that tyrannize enthusiasm and a strong desire unruly in the service of humanity, so I've embraced that be harder for humans if this seemed necessary at the moment of moments. However, if you want me to live two consecutive days in a single room with anyone, because I was able to bear it. I know this experience. So when I found myself close to another human being I felt that his shock self and take their toll on my freedom. I am capable of over twenty-four hours that I hate best man: this is in my view, a man becomes unbearable because it is lavish in slow eating food on the table, and this is because it is infected with a cold is no ever-. I became an enemy of human beings when they approached me even a little bit ... But I noticed every time I involuntarily whenever step up to human beings as individuals, increased my love for humanity heat clause"

"It is curious that this man who, even in my childhood, made such an impression upon me, who had such a crucial influence on the whole bent of my mind, and who perhaps has even cast his shadow over the whole of my future, still remains, even now, a complete enigma to me in many respects."

"It is difficult for someone else to someone else to know the depth of pain which Oanih; and so for the simple reason that it is not I, but the last."

"It is difficult one always to deliver the pain of others."

"It is easier for a Russian to become an Atheist, than for any other nationality in the world. And not only does a Russian 'become an Atheist,' but he actually BELIEVES IN Atheism, just as though he had found a new faith, not perceiving that he has pinned his faith to a negation. Such is our anguish of thirst!"

"It is good literature, Varenjka, is very good. I know the third day of visits. The weight thing. To strengthened human heart, as he learns to live."

"It is his country has changed everything in his life."

"It is indisputable that the man loves to build and design ways, but as he so loves so passionately destruction and chaos?"

"It is known by the clever people at the heart of friendship resides exclusively in humiliation."

"It is lying to himself and accept that it fools his lies up so that it becomes incapable of seeing the truth in any position not see back in the same or around"

"It is man's unique privilege, among all other organisms. By pursuing falsehood you will arrive at the truth!"

"It is my understanding that helps me, but the devil."

"It is necessary that every man have at least somewhere to go. For there are times when one absolutely must go at least somewhere!"

"It is not enough one has to be intelligent mind so as not to deceive, but must also have a sensitive heart."

"It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact. Even if he admits it, he admits it as a fact of nature till then unrecognized by him. 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."

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

"It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them -- the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas."

"It is not the real punishment. The only effectual one, the only deterrent and softening one, lies in the recognition of sin by conscience."

"It is not time that matters, but you yourself."

"It is possible that the man loves another man abstract love, and that love sometimes actually, but after (from afar)."

"It is precisely that requirement of shared worship that has been the principal source of suffering for individual man and the human race since the beginning of history. In their efforts to impose universal worship, men have unsheathed their swords and killed one another. They have invented gods and challenged each other: "Discard your gods and worship mine or I will destroy both your gods and you!"

"It is to know what they feared more people are afraid, that the fear humans more afraid to come forward is a step forward, is to say a personal word."

"It may happen that he sends a letter in verse, a mag-ni-fi-cent one, but which afterward he might wish to bring back with the tears of his whole life, for the sense of beauty is violated."

"It might be near the child has devastated your anger, Vtfelt of your tongue a bad word, you might not notice the presence of the child, but he saw you, and the picture unclean malicious left by him will remain deep in his heart, I've sown - without notify the Association - the seed of evil in this object is small There is no doubt that the seed bad days will brief to bring him misery."

"It must be true that the whole second half of a man's life is most often made up only of habits accumulated during the first half."

"It often only seems that there are no points in common, when there really are a lot... it comes from people's laziness, that they sort themselves out by looks and can't find anything"

"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."

"It seems to me that if there were such a man, for example, as would seize a red-hot bar of iron and clutch it in his hand, with the purpose of measuring his strength of mind, and in the course of ten seconds would be overcoming the intolerable pain and would finally overcome it, this man, it seems to me, would endure something like what was experience now, in these ten seconds."

"It seems to me that the great men must feel on this earth with great sadness."

"It sometimes happened that you might be familiar with a man for several years thinking he was a wild animal, and you would regard him with contempt. And then suddenly a moment would arrive when some uncontrollable impulse would lay his soul bare, and you would behold in it such riches, such sensitivity and warmth, such a vivid awareness of its own suffering and the suffering of others, that the scales would fall from your eyes and at first you would hardly be able to believe what you had seen and heard. The reverse also happens."

"It suddenly seemed to me that I was lonely, that everyone was forsaking me and going away from me. Of course, any one is entitled to ask who “everyone” was. For though I had been living almost eight years in Petersburg I had hardly an acquaintance. But what did I want with acquaintances? I was acquainted with all Petersburg as it was..."

"It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently."

"It was a marvelous night, the sort of night one only experiences when one is young. The sky was so bright, and there were so many stars that, gazing upward, one couldn't help wondering how so many whimsical, wicked people could live under such a sky."

"It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young, dear reader."

"It was dark in the corridor; they were standing near a light. For a minute they looked silently at each other. Razumikhin remembered that minute all his life. Raskolnikov's burning and fixed look seemed to grow more intense every moment, penetrating his soul, his consciousness. All at once Razumikhin gave a start. Something strange seemed to pass between them . . . as if the hint of some idea, something horrible, hideous, flitted by and was suddenly understood on both sides . . . Razumikhin turned pale as a corpse. "You understand now?”"

"It was evident that he revived by fits and starts. He would suddenly come to himself from actual delirium for a few minutes; he would remember and talk with complete consciousness, chiefly in disconnected phrases which he had perhaps thought out and learnt by heart in the long weary hours of his illness, in his bed, in sleepless solitude."

"It was from feeling oneself that one had reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you never could become a different man; that even if time and faith were still left you to change into something different you would most likely not wish to change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into."

"It was impossible to tell at first sight whether he loved his meek, obedient wife, Marfa. But he really did lover her, and she knew it."