With love one can live even without happiness.
The most pressing question on the problem of faith is whether a man as a civilized being can believe in the divinity of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, for therein rests the whole of our faith.
There is no idea, no fact, which could not be vulgarized and presented in a ludicrous light.
Only through suffering can we find ourselves.
If it were considered desirable to destroy a human being, the only thing necessary would be to give his work a character of uselessness.
The consciousness of life is higher than life.
If the people around you are spiteful and callous and will not hear you, fall down before them and beg their forgiveness; for in truth you are to blame for their not wanting to hear you.
I do not wish you much happiness – it would bore you; I do not wish you trouble either; but, following the people’s philosophy, I will simply repeat: ‘Live more’ and try somehow not to be too bored; this useless wish I am adding on my own.
My friends, God is necessary for me if only because he is the one being who can be loved eternally.
In every idea of genius or in every new human idea, or, more simply still, in every serious human idea born in anyone’s brain, there is something that cannot possibly be conveyed to others.
Nature doesn’t ask your permission; it doesn’t care about your wishes, or whether you like its laws or not. You’re obliged to accept it as it is, and consequently all its results as well.
Because I’m a Karamazov. Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I’m even pleased that I’m falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful.
My sweetheart! When I think of you, it’s as if I’m holding some healing balm to my sick soul, and although i suffer for you, i find that even suffering for you is easy.
There is not a thing that is more positive than bread.
For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments.
There is nothing more alluring to man than freedom of conscience, but neither is there anything more agonizing.
They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown less.
Now I’m living out my life in a corner, trying to console myself with the stupid, useless excuse that an intelligent man cannot turn himself into anything, that only a fool can make anything he wants out of himself.
Eh, brother, but nature has to be corrected and guided, otherwise we’d all drown in prejudices. Without that there wouldn’t be even a single great man.
I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky – that’s all it is. It’s not a matter of intellect or logic, it’s loving with one’s inside, with one’s stomach.