Great Throughts Treasury

"The poor little thing, she'd saved this student's letter as a treasure and had run to fetch this precious treasure of hers, not wanting me to leave without knowing that she too was the object of sincere, honest love, and that someone exists who had spoken to her respectfully. Probably that letter was fated to lie in her box without results. But that didn't matter; I'm sure that she'll guard it as a treasure her whole life, as her pride and vindication; and now, at a moment like this, she remembered it and brought it out to exult naively before me, to raise herself in my eyes, so that I could see it for myself and could also think well of her." Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground"

"The prince says that the world will be saved by beauty! And I maintain that the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love."

"The queen who mended her stockings in prison must have looked every inch a queen and even more a queen than at sumptuous banquets and levees."

"The question is not resolved in you, and there lies your great grief, for it urgently demands resolution... Even if it cannot be resolved in a positive way, it will never be resolved in the negative way either--you yourself know this property of your heart, and therein lies the whole of its torment. But thank the Creator that he has given you a lofty heart, capable of being tormented by such a torment, 'to set your mind on things that are above, for our true homeland is in heaven.' May God grant that your heart's decision overtake you still on earth, and may God bless your path!"

"The question is still eroding your heart, but sometimes martyr likes to entertain himself desperate, and you, in distract yourself articles in the magazine, and discussed in the group, even though you do not trust what it argues a heart flout it from the inside .. Did not answer that question, do not answer that question, a great sadness because he complained vociferously students answer."

"The question now,' my young thinker reflected, 'is whether or not it is possible for such a period ever to come. If it does come, then everything will be resolved and mankind will finally be settled. But since, in view of man's inveterate stupidity, it may not be settled for another thousand years, anyone who already knows the truth is permitted to settle things for himself, absolutely as he wishes, on the new principles. In this sense, everything is permitted to him. Moreover, since God and immortality do not exist in any case, even if this period should never come, the new man is allowed to become a man-god, though it be he alone in the whole world, and of course, in this new rank, to jump lightheartedly over any former moral obstacle of the former slave-man, if need be. There is no law for God! Where God stand--there is the place of God! Where I stand, there at once will be the foremost place...everything is permitted, and that's that!' It's all very nice; only if one wants to swindle, why, I wonder, should one also need the sanction of truth? But such is the modern little Russian man: without such a sanction, he doesn't even dare to swindle, so much does he love the truth."

"The real gentleman should not denote emotion but lost his entire fortune. Should make little money, as if it were something that was not worth fixing attention on it."

"The real truth is always far-fetched... To make the truth more than likely, you have absolutely mingle falsehood."

"The reason why I consider myself a clever man is simply because I could never in my life finish anything I'd started. All right, I am a talker, a harmless, boring talker as we all are. But what can I do if the direct and sole purpose of every intelligent man is to talk, that is to say, to waste his time deliberately?"

"The rich do not like that never complains poor luck publicly, shows that this upset them and bothering them .. And misery always annoying if at all, as if Anat the poor hinder bedroom rich."

"The righteous man departs, but his light remains."

"The Russian soul is a dark place."

"The Secret Life of Man is not that only lives, but in why he lives."

"The servants used to say, 'he read himself silly."

"The side whiskers indeed were quite handsome. But he stroked them so very zealously that looking at him, one might very well think that first just the side whiskers had been brought into the world, and then later the gentleman was attached to them in order to stroke them."

"The silence of earth seemed to melt into the silence of the heavens. The mystery of earth was one with the mystery of the stars."

"The sky was horribly dark, but one could distinctly see tattered clouds, and between them fathomless black patches. Suddenly I noticed in one of these patches a star, and began watching it intently. That was because that star had given me an idea: I decided to kill myself that night."

"The small things are that have the most significant and the greatest danger! This is the truth, that small things like this hat is that spoil everything in the last command is always."

"The socialist who is a Christian is more to be dreaded than a socialist who is an atheist."

"The stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The stupider one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence wriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave, but stupidity is honest and straightforward."

"The suffering! But it is the sole cause of consciousness! I have stated, it is true, in the beginning that consciousness, in my opinion, is one of the greatest evils of man, but I know that man loves her and not exchanged for any satisfaction, whatever."

"The temperament reflects everything like a mirror! Gaze into it and admire what you see! But why are you so pale, Rodion Romanovitch? Is the room stuffy? Shall I open the window?"

"The temperament reflects everything like a mirror."

"The torments of a proud decision, a deep conscience! God, in whom he did not believe, and his truth were overcoming his heart, which still did not want to submit."

"The total intensity of not Akatrathi that I had hoped eventually to catch the one minute I feel it. That something worthy of attention"

"The triumphant sense of security, of deliverance from overwhelming danger that was what filled his whole soul that moment without thought for the future, without analysis, without suppositions or surmises, without doubts and without questioning. It was an instant of full, direct, purely instinctive joy."

"The vast mass of mankind is mere material, and only exists in order by some great effort, by some mysterious process, by means of some crossing of races and stocks, to bring into the world at last perhaps one man out of a thousand with a spark of independence."

"The very people who today kissed your feet, tomorrow, at a nod from me, will rush to heap the coals up around your stake, do you know that?"

"The whole law of human existence consists in nothing other than a man's always being able to bow before the immeasurably great. If people are deprived of the immeasurably great, they will not live and will die in despair. The immeasurable and infinite is as necessary for man as the small planet he inhabits."

"The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key."

"The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder."

"Their favorite phrase! From which it follows that, if society is normally organized, all crime will cease at once, since there will be nothing to protest against and all men will become righteous in one instant. Human nature is not taken into account, it is excluded, it's not supposed to exist! They don't recognize that humanity, developing by a historical living process, will become at last a normal society, but they believe that a social system that has come out of some mathematical brain is going to organize all humanity at once and make it just and sinless in an instant, quicker than any living process! That's why they instinctively dislike history, 'nothing but ugliness and stupidity in it,' and they explain it all as stupidity! That's why they so dislike the living process of life; they don't want a living soul! The living soul demands life, the soul won't obey the rules of mechanics, the soul is an object of suspicion, the soul is retrograde! But what they want though it smells of death and can be made of India-rubber, at least is not alive, has no will, is servile and won't revolt! And it comes in the end to their reducing everything to the building of walls and the planning of rooms and passages in a phalanstery! The phalanstery is ready, indeed, but your human nature is not ready for the phalanstery—it wants life, it hasn't completed its vital process, it's too soon for the graveyard! You can't skip over nature by logic. Logic presupposes three possibilities, but there are millions! Cut away a million, and reduce it all to the question of comfort! That's the easiest solution of the problem! It's seductively clear and you musn't think about it. That's the great thing, you mustn't think! The whole secret of life in two pages of print!"

"Then I should have chosen a career for myself, I should have been a sluggard and a glutton, not a simple one, but, for instance, one with sympathies for everything sublime and beautiful. How do you..."

"Then one should not step on the first rung at all."

"Then the great hour struck, and every man showed himself in his true colors."

"The small things are that have the most significant and the greatest risk, this is the truth, that is the small things that spoil everything in another it's always."

"There are certain things in a man's past which he does not divulge to everybody but, perhaps, only to his friends. Again there are certain things he will not divulge even to his friends; he will divulge them perhaps only to himself, and that, too, as a secret. But, finally, there are things which he is afraid to divulge even to himself, and every decent man has quite an accumulation of such things in his mind. I can put it even this way: the more decent a man is, the larger will the number of such things be."

"Then, oh, then a totally new life would begin at once! He dreamed of this other, this renewed and now virtuous life (it must, it must be virtuous) ceaselessly and feverishly. He thirsted for this resurrection and renewal. The vile bog he had gotten stuck in of his own will burdened him too much, and, like a great many men in such cases, he believed most of all in a change of place: if only it weren't for these people, if only it weren't for these circumstances, if only one could fly away from this cursed place--then everything would be reborn! He had often felt anguish before, and it would be no wonder if it came at such a moment, when he was preparing, the very next day, having suddenly broken with everything that had drawn him there, to make another sharp turn, entering upon a new, completely unknown path, again quite as lonely as before, having much hope, but not knowing for what, expecting much, too much, from life, but unable himself to define anything either in his expectations or even in his desires."

"There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken."

"The world stands on absurdities, and without them perhaps nothing at all would happen."

"The sun will rise and - look at it, why is it not a corpse? Everything is dead, and there are dead bodies all over."

"There are moments, you reach moments, when all of a sudden time stops and becomes eternal."

"There are moments when people love crime," Alyosha said pensively. "Yes, yes! You've spoken my own thought, they love it, they all love it, and love it always, not just at 'moments.' You know, it's as if at some point they all agreed to lie about it, and have been lying about it ever since. They all say they hate what's bad, but secretly they all love it."

"There are people in silent grief, it goes into itself and is silent. But there is sorrow, torn: it will break into tears again... It is especially in women. But it does not help the silent grief. Lamentations quench here only in that irritate and even more heartbreaking. Such grief and consolation does not want his unquenchable sense of feeds. Lamentations only need to constantly irritate the wound."

"There are seconds, they come only five or six at a time, and you suddenly feel the presence of eternal harmony, fully achieved. It is nothing earthly; not that it's heavenly, but man cannot endure it in his earthly state. One must change physically or die. The feeling is clear and indisputable. As if you suddenly sense the whole of nature and suddenly say: yes, this is true. God, when he was creating the world, said at the end of each day of creation: 'Yes, this is true, this is good.' This . . . this is not tenderheartedness, but simply joy. You don't forgive anything, because there is no longer anything to forgive. You don't really love — oh, what is here is higher than love! What's most frightening is that it's so terribly clear, and there's such joy. If it were longer than five seconds — the soul couldn't endure it and would vanish. In those five seconds I live my life through, and for them I would give my whole life, because it's worth it. To endure ten seconds one would have to change physically."

"There are people who feel deeply but are somehow beaten down. Their buffoonery is something like a spiteful irony against those to whom they dare not speak the truth directly because of a long-standing, humiliating timidity before them. Believe me, Krasotkin, such buffoonery is sometimes extremely tragic."

"The utmost despair enjoy, especially when human well aware that in a hopeless position."

"There are crimes that are truly uncomely. With crimes, whatever they may be, the more blood, the more horror there is, the more imposing they are, the more picturesque, so to speak, but there are crimes that are shameful, disgraceful, all horror aside, so to speak, even far too ungracious..."

"There are moments in the life of old liars who have been play-acting all their lives when they are so carried away by the part they're playing that they actually do weep and tremble with excitement, in spite of the fact that at that very moment (or second later) they could have whispered to themselves: 'you're lying, you shameless old fool! Now, too, you're just acting a part in spite of all your sacred wrath and sacred moment of your wrath.' Dmitry frowned threateningly and looked at his father with indescribable contempt."

"There are something ineffably touching in our St. Petersburg campaign, when, in spring, she suddenly deploys all his strength, flourishes, adorns itself, is wreathes of flowers. She makes me thought to these girls languid girls, anemic, which does excite than pity, sometimes indifference, and abruptly, overnight, become inexpressibly wonderful Beauty: you abide stunned before them, asking you what power has put this unexpected fire in these sad and thoughtful eyes, which has colorful of a pink blood these pale cheeks formerly, who has shed this passion on these traits who had no of expression, why totaled and lower if deeply these young breasts? My God! which could give the poor girl this force, the sudden fullness of life, this beautiful? Who threw this flash in this smile? Who therefore fact well sparkle this gaiety? You look around of you, you looking someone, you guess ... But that the hours pass and perhaps tomorrow returns the sad look and pensive of yesteryear, the same pale face, the same timid gaits, erased: it is the seal of grief, repentance, it is also the regret of the blossoming ephemeral ... and you deplore that this beauty is either faded so fast: what! you do not have even had time to love!"