Yes, I’m glum, I’m continually closed. I often want to leave society. I may also do good to people, but often I don’t see the slightest reason for doing good to them. And people are not at all so beautiful that they should be cared for so much. Why don’t they come forward directly and openly, and why is it so necessary that I should go and foist myself on them? That’s what I asked myself.
Very well, then there’s an experiment, and the thing is proved; one cannot live and count each moment; say what you like, but one cannot.
The centripetal force on our planet is still fearfully strong, Alyosha. I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves you know sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I’ve long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from old habit one’s heart prizes them.
Believe that God loves you so as you cannot conceive of it; even with your sin and in your sin he loves you.
I was laughed at by everyone upon every occasion. But no one knew or guessed that if there was a man on this earth who knew better than anyone how ridiculous I was, that man was myself, and that was the thing that I found most exasperating of all, that they did not know it.
The point is in life, in life alone – in discovering it, constantly and eternally, and not at all in the discovery itself!
The dreamer – if you want an exact definition – is not a human being, but a creature of an intermediate sort. For the most part he settles in some inaccessible corner, as though hiding from the light of day; once he slips into his corner, he grows to it like a snail, or, anyway, he is in that respect very much like that remarkable creature, which is an animal and a house both at once, and is called a tortoise.
I am besieged by such strange thoughts, such dark sensations, such obscure questions, which still crowd my mind – and somehow I have neither the strength nor the desire to resolve them. It is not for me to resolve all this!
Two abysses, gentlemen of the jury, remember that Karamazov can contemplate two abysses, and both at the same time.
I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, I know it’s there. And there’s a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.
Gentlemen, I am tormented by questions; answer them for me. You, for instance, want to cure men of their old habits and reform their will in accordance with science and good sense. But how do you know, not only that it is possible, but also that it is desirable to reform man in that way? And what leads you to the conclusion that man’s inclinations need reforming? In short, how do you know that such a reformation will be a benefit to man?
She understood from it all what a woman, if she loves sincerely, always understands before anything else – namely, that I myself was unhappy.
You know, in my opinion, being ridiculous is sometimes even a good thing, and better than that: we can forgive one another more quickly, and acquire humilty more quickly; after all, we can’t understand everything at once, we can’t begin directly from perfection!
Try and set yourself the task not to think of a white bear, and the cursed thing comes to mind every minute.
Even if I be likened to a rat, I do not care, provided that that particular rat be wanted by you, and be of use in the world, and be retained in its position, and receive its reward. But what a rat it is!
You are very beautiful, Aglaya Ivanovna, so beautiful that one is afraid to look at you.
We sometimes choose absolute nonsense because in our foolishness we see in that nonsense the easiest means for attaining a supposed advantage.
There are bookish dreams here, sir, there is a heart chafed by theories;.
A new, sad and cheerless feeling constricted his heart; he suddenly realized that at that moment, and for a long time now, he had not been saying what he should have been saying, nor doing what he should have been doing, and that these cards he held in his hands, and had been so pleased about, could be of no help now.
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.