Our world does not need tepid souls. It needs burning hearts, men who know the proper place of moderation.
Thought is always out in front. It sees too far, farther than the body which lives in the present.
To abolish hope is to bring the thought back to the body. And the body is doomed to perish.
Tragedy forms a closed world, in which we stumble over and knock against obstacles. In the theater, tragedy must be born and die in the restricted area of the stage.
In the local movie theater, you can buy mint-flavored lozenges with the words: “Will you marry me one day?” “Do you love me” written on them, together with the replies: “This evening,” “A lot,” etc. You pass them to the girl next to you, who replies in the same way. Lives become linked together by an exchange of mint lozenges.
My heart talks about nothing but you.
Everything, in me and in people, draws me downward.
Deep down I knew perfectly well that it doesn’t much matter whether you die at thirty or at seventy, since in either case other men and women will naturally go on living – and for thousands of years. In fact, nothing could be clearer. Whether it was now or twenty years from now, I would still be the one dying.
You would not write about loneliness so much if you knew how to get the most out of it.
What distinguishes modern sensibility from classical sensibility is that the latter thrives on moral problems and the former on metaphysical problems.
A time comes when one can no longer feel the emotion of love. The only thing left is tragedy. Living for someone or for something no longer has any meaning. Nothing seems to keep its meaning except the idea of dying for something.
But simultaneously he situates himself in relation to time. He takes his place in it. He admits that he stands at a certain point on a curve that he acknowledges having to travel to its end. He belongs to time, and by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy.
If God exists, all depends on him and we can do nothing against his will. If he does not exist, everything depends on us. For Kirilov, as for Nietzsche, to kill God is to become god oneself; it is to realize on this earth the eternal life of which the Gospel speaks.
We believe that the truth of this age can be found only by living through the drama of it to the very end.
One thinks differently about the same thing in the morning and in the evening. But where is the truth, in the night thought or in the spirit of midday? Two replies, two races of men.
From now on, it can be said that plague was the concern of all of us.
That was unthinkable, he said; all men believe in God, even those who reject Him. Of this he was absolutely sure; if ever he came to doubt it, his life would lose all meaning.
Yes, be patient with me. My heart is heavy.
Style, like sheer silk underwear, sometimes hides eczema.
Even humiliated, the flesh is my only certainty. I can live only on it. The creature is my native land. This is why I have chosen this absurd and ineffectual effort. This is why I am on the side of the struggle.