The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.
I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.
When he has lost all hope, all object in life, man becomes a monster in his misery.
It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.
Be the sun and all will see you.
Lying is a delightful thing for it leads to the truth.
If everything on earth were rational, nothing would happen.
Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.
The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was ’sublime and beautiful,’the more deeply I sank into my mire and the more ready I was to sink in it altogether.
Walking along the crowded row He met the one he used to know.
If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.
It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.
Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering...
Above all, avoid lies, all lies, especially the lie to yourself. Keep watch on your own lie and examine it every hour, every minute. And avoid contempt, both of others and of yourself: what seems bad to you in yourself is purified by the very fact that you have noticed it in yourself. And avoid fear, though fear is simply the consequence of every lie. Never be frightened at your own faintheartedness in attaining love, and meanwhile do not even be very frightened by your own bad acts.
I’ve never been a coward at heart, although I’ve always been a coward in action;.
How can a man of consciousness have the slightest respect for himself.
Whoever has experienced the power and the unrestrained ability to humiliate another human being automatically loses his own sensations. Tyranny is a habit, it has its own organic life, it develops finally into a disease. The habit can kill and coarsen the very best man or woman to the level of a beast. Blood and power intoxicate... the return of the human dignity, repentance and regeneration becomes almost impossible.
I’m a master of speaking silently – all my life I’ve spoken silently and I’ve lived through entire tragedies in silence.
By the experience of active love. Strive to love your neighbour actively and indefatigably. In as far as you advance in love you will grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul. If you attain to perfect self-forgetfulness in the love of your neighbour, then you will believe without doubt, and no doubt can possibly enter your soul. This has been tried. This is certain.
I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, ‘I exist.’ In thousands of agonies – I exist. I’m tormented on the rack – but I exist! Though I sit alone in a pillar – I exist! 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.