Great Throughts Treasury

"Very often the only way it seems that there is no common points, and they have a very ... it's because of laziness human is that people are so Intermedia are sorted by eye and cannot find anything."

"Very well, I agree that two and two make four is an excellent thing; but...two and two make five is also a very fine thing too."

"Viper will eat viper, and it would serve them both right!"

"Walking along the crowded row. He met the one he used to know."

"Was it all put into words, or did both understand that they had the same thing at heart and in their minds, so that there was no need to speak of it aloud, and better not to speak of it?"

"We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'."

"We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what if it's one little room, like a bath house in the country, black and grimy and spiders in every corner. and that's all eternity is? I sometimes fancy it like that."

"We are all divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less. We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it."

"We are all happy if we but knew it."

"We are all on the face of rounding are like madmen really often, with one difference is that the patients most of us a little crazy, it is necessary to make a distinction here degrees. As normal it is to be human to say that it hardly exists. We may find together an individual or individuals close to normal, among the tens of thousands, and possibly hundreds of thousands of individuals."

"We are all privately agreed that it is better in books."

"We are full of hatred, my girl, you and I! We are both full of hatred! As though we could forgive on another! Save him, and I’ll worship you all my life."

"We are of a broad, Karamazovian nature--and this is what I am driving at--capable of containing all possible opposites and of contemplating both abysses at once, the abyss above us, an abyss of lofty ideals, and the abyss beneath us, and abyss of the lowest and foulest degradation."

"We are the people with the whims of tyrants. We do not forgive just a change in the face. God knows why this is the face that has changed."

"We cannot love a man, but if it remains hidden from our view. Whenever Im not the face dissipated Love."

"We degrade God too much, ascribing to him our ideas, in our vexation at being unable to understand Him."

"We are all people Bonissima the point of being comical."

"We don’t even know what living means now, what it is, and what it is called? Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. We are oppressed at being men—men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalized man."

"We don't understand that life is heaven, for we have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, we shall embrace each other and weep."

"We have all lost touch with life, we all limp, each to a greater or lesser degree."

"We have facts, but facts are not everything - at least half the business lies in how you interpret them."

"We learned that he had been arrested outside the city, experiencing access amok. He had been taken to hospital where he died two days later. A similar death was the necessary consequence, naturally, his whole life. He had to die so when all that supported the life of a sudden disappeared like a vision, like an empty dream. He died after losing his last hope, after having had the clear vision of all that had lured and sustained his life. The truth blinded insoutenabe its luster. and what was the lie appeared to him as to himself. During the last hour of his life, he had heard a great genius who had told him of his own existence and condemned forever. With the last sound of the violin sprung brilliant S. .. had revealed to him the mystery of art and engineering, forever young, strong and true, had crushed his truth. It seemed that everything that had tormented him throughout his life by mysterious suffering unspeakable, what he had seen to this day in a dream and he fled in horror and hid by lying in his life, everything he foresaw and feared, all this suddenly shone in his eyes, stubbornly unwilling to recognize that light is the light and the darkness the darkness. The truth was intolerable to the eyes that saw light for the first time and it blinded him and destroyed his reason. She had struck suddenly, like lightning. Suddenly realized what he had waited all his life with a tremor of terror. It seemed that his whole life was an ax hanging over his head, that all his life he had waited at every moment, in untold suffering, that the ax would strike. Finally she had struck. The blow was fatal. He wanted to escape, but he did not know where to go. The last hope had vanished, wiped out the last excuse. One whose life had been a burden for many years, including the death, as he believed in his blindness, his resurrection was to bring him, was dead. Finally he was alone and nothing bothered him. He was finally free! For the last time, in a fit of despair, he wanted to judge oneself, to condemn ruthlessly as a fair judge, but his bow was weakened and could not repeat slightly last sentence of musical genius. At this point, the madness that lurked for ten years, had hit irrevocably."

"We have facts,’ they say. But facts are not everything—at least half the business lies in how you interpret them!"

"We must deal more people... Transaction children, and that some people deal... Transaction patients."

"We must destroy the idea of God in the mind of man. Then everyone will know that he is mortal, with no hope of resurrection, and each resigned himself to death with quiet pride. The man will refrain from murmuring against the brevity of life and love his brothers a disinterested affection. Love does provide that brief pleasures, but the very consciousness of brevity in this strengthen the intensity as much as it once diluted in the hopes of an everlasting love."

"We must name the eminent and fascinating Prince N. - once the vanquisher of female hearts all over Europe."

"We must never forget that human motives are generally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of another."

"We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken."

"We took from him... proclaimed ourselves sole rulers of the earth, though we have not yet been able to complete our work."

"Well, good-bye! If the throttle sadness, the Merz. I have a concern than in spirit, Makar Aleksejeviç. Neither himself knows the reason. And such was somewhat day. Goodbye!"

"Well, listen then. On the other side, fresh young lives thrown away for want of help and by thousands, on every side! A hundred thousand good deeds could be done and helped, on that old woman's money which will be buried in a monastery! Hundreds, thousands perhaps, might be set on the right path; dozens of families saved from destitution, from ruin, from vice, from the Lock hospitals—and all with her money. Kill her, take her money and with the help of it devote oneself to the service of humanity and the good of all. What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds? For one life thousands would be saved from corruption and decay. One death, and a hundred lives in exchange—it's simple arithmetic! Besides, what value has the life of that sickly, stupid, ill-natured old woman in the balance of existence! No more than the life of a louse, of a black-beetle, less in fact because the old woman is doing harm. She is wearing out the lives of others; the other day she bit Lizaveta's finger out of spite; it almost had to be amputated."

"Well, set the monster free...he's begun his hymn, because he finds it all so easy...but I'd give a quadrillion quadrillion for two seconds of joy."

"We find it embarrassing even to be human, flesh and blood people really own us ashamed of it, we consider it degrading and tend to be I have no idea why people - usually something that has not yet been mentioned. We are stillborn, and otherwise much born of parents no longer live, which ever we like. We got taste. Soon we shall contrive somehow and immediate birth of idea."

"Well, so I will talk about myself."

"Well, suppose intelligent people don't believe, but that's from intelligence, and you, I say, squirt that you are, what do you understand about God? You were taught by some student, and if he'd taught you to light icon lamps, you'd do it."

"Well, yes, yes, to be enslaved to you is a pleasure. There is, there is pleasure in the ultimate degree of humiliation and insignificance!" I went on raving. "Devil knows, maybe there is in the knout, too, when the knout comes down on your back and tears your flesh to pieces...But maybe I want to try other pleasures as well."

"Well, you may abuse me, be angry with me if you like, Porfiry Petrovitch began again, but I can't resist. Allow me one little question (I know I am troubling you). There is just one little notion I want to express, simply that I may not forget it."

"We're always thinking of eternity as an idea that cannot be understood, something immense. But why must it be? What if, instead of all this, you suddenly find just a little room there, something like a village bath-house, grimy, and spiders in every corner, and that's all eternity is. Sometimes, you know, I can't help feeling that that's what it is."

"We've already had Malthus, the friend of humanity. But the friend of humanity with shaky moral principles is the devourer of humanity, to say nothing of his conceit; for, wound the vanity of any one of these numerous friends of humanity, and he's ready to set fire to the world out of petty revenge - like all the rest of us, though, in that, to be fair; like myself, vilest of all, for I might well be the first to bring the fuel and run away myself."

"What a book this is, and what lessons there are in it! What a book is Holy Scripture, what a miracle and what a strength is given to man with it! Like a sculpture composed of the world, of man and human characters, and it has all been named and explained for the ages, ever more. And how many mysteries are resolved and revealed..." (Concerning Holy Scripture in the Life of Fr. Zosima)"

"We've got facts, they say. But facts aren't everything; at least half the battle consists in how one makes use of them!"

"What answer had your lecturer in Moscow to make to the question why he was forging notes? 'Everybody is getting rich one way or another, so I want to make haste to get rich too.' I don't remember the exact words, but the upshot was that he wants money for nothing, without waiting or working! We've grown used to having everything ready-made, to walking on crutches, to having our food chewed for us. Then the great hour struck, and every man showed himself in his true colours."

"What are you thinking now? - Well, where are you going to get up and going to pass me, and I will follow you and look at you with eyes; going to crack the silk of your dress, my heart will fail, you will leave the room and I remember of each of the words you have spoken and the tone of voice with which you said. As for last night, I thought of nothing, I did nothing but listen to how breathed sleeping and how you moved in bed twice."

"What do you think prevented people killing themselves? - Just ... I do not know exactly ... beliefs they hold two blank, as if the two things, and only two things, one of which is very small, the other very large, with only a small or too big. - What is the little one? - Pain. - Pain Is? In this case, it is something that may be important pain? - First equally important. has committed suicide two types: those who commit suicide due to a huge pain or anger, those who committed suicide two berserk. They finish their work suddenly. Rarely think about the pain. Suddenly, everything ends. But this is a job sane, there are those who deliberately ... think that they are so... - Is there no way to die without pain? - Consider a rock the size of a big house, he said - and you can hang in the air of his right under the rock. Upon this rock ... falling down on your head ... Are you suffering from hear? - Household size is a rock? Sure to be a terrible thing. - Fear is pain Were not have mentioned? - Mountain as a rock ... Tens of thousands of tons of weight ... No pain duymazd?m think. - I'd be terrified all the time and stops the rock hanging over you. That there is no one who is not afraid. The world's largest knowledge the fear, the biggest the doctor. If he or she suffering from pain, but everybody knew duymayaca??n? k?vran?rd?. - What is the second reason? The big one? - the other world. - I mean, as a penalty for? - It does not matter. The other world here, only the other world. - What atheists do not believe in the afterlife? Still did not respond. - when there is no difference between living in liberated people avoid. That is the objective foreveryone. The point? Then who wants to live - no one. - He said with determination - Life is pain, life is fear, and man is unhappy. Today, there is only pain and fear. Mankind loves life, loves, because pain and fear. Try having the appropriate. Given in response to the pain and fear of life, this is where I always aldan?lan. Today's people, it is not more than human. But one day he will come new people: proud to live happily avoid the blind is no difference between the new human being. If the pain and fear that God is who will be the bottom. The other gods will not happen. - Then ... you have other gods? - I do not: but the fact that there is. The stone itself, there is no pain, but are suffering from fear of stone. Pain and fear of God, who is the bottom. this is a whole new life, a new person, which means that everything is new. - avoid to live according to a difference between everyone will just kill himself ... Get it changes you. - It does not matter. He will kill delusion. The real freedom, the actual independence of the person who wants to have to courage to kill himself ... The mystery of the person who dared to kill himself delusion is unlocked. This last point might be reached freedom, there is nothing beyond that. God can dare to kill himself. Today, anyone can do it, and so does God, so that you can destroy everything. But I did not do one more. - Millions of people are killed himself. - But they all killed themselves in fear. Fear not to kill. Fear to kill God himself will be killed."

"We degrade Providence too much by attributing our ideas to it out of annoyance at being unable to understand it."

"What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?"

"What do you think? shouted Razumihin, louder than ever, you think I am attacking them for talking nonsense? Not a bit! 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 never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen. And a fine thing, too, in its way; but we can't even make mistakes on our own account! Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I'll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's. In the first case you are a man, in the second you're no better than a bird. Truth won't escape you, but life can be cramped. There have been examples. And what are we doing now? In science, development, thought, invention, ideals, aims, liberalism, judgment, experience and everything, everything, everything, we are still in the preparatory class at school. We prefer to live on other people's ideas, it's what we are used to! Am I right, am I right? cried Razumihin, pressing and shaking the two ladies' hands."

"We read the Gospel only on the eve of our speeches, to shine, with the knowledge of a highly original work with the obtainable effect 'measure'."

"Well, what, what new thing can they say to me that I don't know myself? And is that the point? The point here is that--one turn of the wheel, and everything changes, and these same moralizers will be the first (I'm sure of it) to come with friendly jokes to congratulate me. And they won't all turn away from me as they do now. Spit on them all! What am I now? Zro. What may I be tomorrow? Tomorrow I may rise from the dead and begin to live anew! I may find the man in me before he's lost!"

"Well, granted that it was only a dream, yet the sensation of the love of those innocent and beautiful people has remained with me forever, and I feel as though their love is still flowing out to me from over there. I have seen them myself, have known them and been convinced; I loved them, I suffered for them afterwards. Oh, I understood at once even at the time that in many things I could not understand them at all ... But I soon realized that their knowledge was gained and fostered by intuitions different from those of us on earth, and that their aspirations, too, were quite different. They desired nothing and were at peace; they did not aspire to knowledge of life as we aspire to understand it, because their lives were full. But their knowledge was higher and deeper than ours; for our science seeks to explain what life is, aspires to understand it in order to teach others how to love, while they without science knew how to live; and that I understood, but I could not understand their knowledge."