Fyodor Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov (1880)

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A single day is sufficient for a man to discover what happiness is.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It's chemistry, brother, chemistry. There's no help for it, your reverence, you must make way for chemistry.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
You pass by a little child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You don't know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The more you succeed in loving, the more you'll be convinced at the existence of God and the immortality of your soul.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Being at a loss to resolve these questions, I am resolved to leave them without any resolution.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we refuse to see it.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
At some thoughts one stands perplexed - especially at the sight of men's sin - and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that, once and for all, you may subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
But to fall in love does not mean to love. One can fall in love and still hate.

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

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Alyosha's heart could not bear uncertainty, for the nature of his love was always active. He could not love passively; once he loved, he immediately also began to help.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fathers and teachers, I ponder, "What is hell?" I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
For if there's no everlasting God, there's no such thing as virtue, and there's no need of it.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God have pity upon you. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and cleanse not only your own sins but the sins of others.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
But profound as psychology is, it's a knife that cuts both ways.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I want to travel in Europe... I know that I am only going to a graveyard, but it's a most precious graveyard.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Anyone who can appease a man's conscience can take his freedom away from him.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
But what are years, what are months!" he would exclaim. "Why count the days, when even one day is enough for man to know all happiness.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God?

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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 miraculous also.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
My feelings, gratitude, for instance, are denied me simply because of my social position.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Love animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, don't harass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you - alas, it is true of almost every one of us!

Fyodor Dostoyevsky