Great Throughts Treasury

"And though there was no longer anything to be astonished at, still manifest reality always has something shocking about it."

"And try letting yourself be carried away by your feelings, blindly, without reflection, without a primary cause, repelling consciousness at least for a time; hate or love, if only not to sit with your hands folded."

"And what does it mean - ridiculous? What does it matter how many times a man is or seems to be ridiculous? Besides, nowadays almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it."

"And what if there are only spiders there, or something of that sort?"

"And what is it in us that is mellowed by civilization? All it does, I’d say, is to develop in man a capacity to feel a greater variety of sensations. And nothing, absolutely nothing else. And through this development, man will yet learn how to enjoy bloodshed. Why, it has already happened . . . . Civilization has made man, if not always more bloodthirsty, at least more viciously, more horribly bloodthirsty."

"And what's strange, what would be marvelous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man."

"And why am I lying down? You must stand 'as an example and a reproach,' she says. ‘Mais, entre nous soit dit’, what else can a man destined to be a standing 'reproach' do but lie down--doesn't she see that?"

"And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and the positive--in other words, only what is conducive to welfare--is for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact."

"And why, just at the moment when he had brought away the embryo of his idea from the old woman had he dropped at once upon a conversation about her?"

"And yet I am convinced that man will never give up true suffering- that is, destruction and chaos. Why, suffering is the sole root of consciousness."

"And you and I had better go work on the land. I want to scrape the earth with my hands."

"And you're sorry that the ephemeral beauty has faded so rapidly, so irretrievably, that it flashed so deceptively and pointlessly before your eyes--you're sorry, for you didn't even have time to fall in love."

"And, beginning to grind his teeth again, Pyotr Petrovich admitted that he'd been a fool--but only to himself, of course."

"And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better - cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?"

"Anna Karenina is sheer perfection as a work of art. No European work of fiction of our present day comes anywhere near it. Furthermore, the idea underlying it shows that it is ours, ours, something that belongs to us alone and that is our own property, our own national 'new word'or, at any rate, the beginning of it."

"Anyone who attacks individual charity, attacks human nature and casts contempt on personal dignity."

"'Anyone who attacks individual charity.' I began, 'attacks human nature and casts contempt on personal dignity. But the organization of public charity and the problem of individual freedom are two distinct questions, and not mutually exclusive. Individual kindness will always remain, because it's an individual impulse, the living impulse of one personality to exert a direct influence upon another.'"

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

"Anyone who lies to himself and listens to his own lies, finally come to this, that he can no more truth to be seen neither in nor out too."

"Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another."

"As always, I do not blame anyone. I've tried great debauchery and exhausted my strength in it; but I don't like debauchery and I did not want it. You've been observing me lately. Do you know that I even looked at these negators of ours with spite, envying them their hopes? But your fears were empty: I could not be their comrade, because I shared nothing. Nor could I do it out of ridicule, for spite, and not because I was afraid of the ridiculous--I cannot be afraid of the ridiculous--but because, after all, I have the habits of a decent man and felt disgusted. Still, if I had more spite and envy for them, I might even have gone over to them....Your brother told me that he who loses his ties with his earth also loses his gods, that is, all his goals. One can argue endlessly about everything, but what poured out of me was only a negation, with no magnanimity and no force. Or not even negation. Everything is always shallow and listless. Magnanimous Kirillov could not endure his idea and--shot himself; but I do see that he was magnanimous because he was not in his right mind. I can never lose my mind, nor can I ever believe an idea to the same degree as he did. I cannot even entertain an idea to the same degree. I could never, never shoot myself! I know I ought to kill myself, to sweep myself off the earth like a vile insect; but I'm afraid of suicide, because I'm afraid of showing magnanimity. I know it will only be one more deceit--the last deceit in an endless series of deceits. What's the use of deceiving oneself just so as to play at magnanimity? There never can be indignation or shame in me; and so no despair either."

"As for me, I was quite tranquil on my fate. Me too, I liked passionately my art; but I knew from the beginning of my career that I would stay, the literal sense of word, a workman of art. In contrast, I am proud of not having buried, like the slave lazy, what had given me nature, and, the contrary, of the have increased considerably. And if we rent my impeccable game, if we boasts my technique, all this I owe it to uninterrupted work, to the net conscience of my strengths, remoteness that I always had for ambition, the satisfaction of oneself and laziness, consequence of this satisfaction ."

"As for my personal opinion, to love only prosperity is even somehow unseemly. Whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, smashing something is occasionally very pleasant too."

"As like most of humanity in general, less people appreciate in particular, as individuals."

"As soon as you have finished telling us anything, you seem to be ashamed of what you've said," Aglaia observed suddenly. "Why is that?"

"At first it was simply liking, Nastenka, but now, now ! I am just in the same position as you were when you went to him with your bundle. In a worse position than you, Nastenka, because he cared for no one else as you do."

"At first—long before indeed—he had been much occupied with one question; why almost all crimes are so badly concealed and so easily detected, and why almost all criminals leave such obvious traces? He had come gradually to many different and curious conclusions, and in his opinion the chief reason lay not so much in the material impossibility of concealing the crime, as in the criminal himself. Almost every criminal is subject to a failure of will and reasoning power by a childish and phenomenal heedlessness, at the very instant when prudence and caution are most essential. It was his conviction that this eclipse of reason and failure of will power attacked a man like a disease, developed gradually and reached its highest point just before the perpetration of the crime, continued with equal violence at the moment of the crime and for longer or shorter time after, according to the individual case, and then passed off like any other disease. The question whether the disease gives rise to the crime, or whether the crime from its own peculiar nature is always accompanied by something of the nature of disease, he did not yet feel able to decide."

"At home, I mainly used to read. I wished to stifle with external sensations all that was ceaselessly boiling up inside me. And among external sensations the only one possible for me was reading. Reading was, of course, a great help. It stirred, delighted, and tormented me."

"At home, to begin with, I mainly used to read. I wished to stifle with external sensations all that was ceaselessly boiling up inside me. And among external sensations the only one possible for me was reading. Reading was, of course, a great help- it stirred, delighted, and tormented me. But at times it bored me terribly. I still wanted to move about, and so I'd suddenly sink into some murky, subterranean, vile debauch- not a great, but a measly little debauch. There were measly little passions in me, sharp, burning, because of my permanent, morbid irritability. I was given to hysterical outbursts, with tears and convulsions. Apart from reading I had nowhere to turn- that is, there was nothing I could then respect in my surroundings, nothing I would be drawn to. What's more, anguish kept boiling up; a hysterical thirst for contradictions, contrasts, would appear, and so I'd set out on debauchery. It is not at all to justify myself that I've been doing all this talking... But no! That's a lie! I precisely wanted to justify myself. I make this little note for myself, gentlemen. I don't want to lie. I've given my word."

"At night I had no sleep, to kill repentance, repentance vain that facilitates say."

"At such times I felt something was drawing me away, and I kept fancying that if I walked straight on, far, far away and reached that line where the sky and earth meet, there I should find the key to the mystery, there I should see a new life a thousand times richer and more turbulent than ours."

"Bad people are to be found everywhere, but even among the worst there may be something good."

"Bah! You want to hear the vilest thing a man’s done and you want him to be a hero at the same time!"

"Be near your brothers. Not just one, but both of them."

"Be the sun and all will see you."

"Beauty is a riddle"

"Beauty is a terrible and frightening thing. Scary, because it is indefinable, and you cannot define it, because God has not given us that puzzles. Here the two banks merge, here all contradictions coexist. I, brother, I am very ignorant, but I thought a lot about these things. How many mysteries! Too many riddles oppress man on earth. Melt them if you can, and come back safely to shore. The beauty! I cannot stand that a man, maybe a heart noble and high-minded, we start with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom. Even more terrible is when one already has in his heart the ideal of Sodom and yet does not deny even the ideal of the Madonna, in fact, his heart burns for this ideal, and it burns really, honestly, as in the innocent years of youth. No, the human soul is immense, too... Who knows precisely what is it? The devil knows, here! What a disgrace seems to mind, for the heart, however, it's all beauty. But perhaps there is beauty in the ideal of Sodom? Believe me, just in the ideal of Sodom finds the vast majority of men! Did you know this secret, or not? The scary thing is that beauty is not only terrible, but it is also a mystery. And 'here that Satan fights against God, and their battlefield is the heart of men. Already, the language beats where the tooth aches... And now we come to the fact. Listen."

"Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man."

"Beauty is not only a terrible thing, it is also a mysterious thing. There God and the Devil strive for mastery, and the battleground is the heart of men."

"Beauty will save the world."

"Because everyone is guilty foreveryone else. For all the 'wee ones,' because there are little children and big children. All people are 'wee ones.' And I'll go for all of them, because there must be someone who will go for all of them."

"Because I'll tell everything to you alone, because it's necessary, because you're necessary, because tomorrow I'll fall from the clouds, because tomorrow life will end and begin. Have you ever felt, have you ever dreamed that you were falling off a mountain into a deep pit? Well, I'm falling now, and not in a dream. And I'm not afraid, and don't you be afraid either. That is, I am afraid, but I'm delighted! That is, not delighted, but ecstatic... Oh, to hell with it, it's all the same, whatever it is. Strong spirit, weak spirit, woman's spirit--whatever it is!"

"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."

"Because it begins to seem to me at such times that I am incapable of beginning a life in real life, because it has seemed to me that I have lost all touch, all instinct for the actual, the real; because at last I have cursed myself; because after my fantastic nights I have moments of returning sobriety, which are awful! Meanwhile, you hear the whirl and roar of the crowd in the vortex of life around you; you hear, you see, men living in reality; you see that life for them is not forbidden, that their life does not float away like a dream, like a vision; that their life is being eternally renewed, eternally youthful, and not one hour of it is the same as another; while fancy is so spiritless, monotonous to vulgarity and easily scared, the slave of shadows, of the idea, the slave of the first cloud that shrouds the sun... One feels that this inexhaustible fancy is weary at last and worn out with continual exercise, because one is growing into manhood, outgrowing one's old ideals: they are being shattered into fragments, into dust; if there is no other life one must build one up from the fragments. And meanwhile the soul longs and craves for something else! And in vain the dreamer rakes over his old dreams, as though seeking a spark among the embers, to fan them into flame, to warm his chilled heart by the rekindled fire, and to rouse up in it again all that was so sweet, that touched his heart, that set his blood boiling, drew tears from his eyes, and so luxuriously deceived him!"

"Because what is man without his volition but a stop on a barrel-organ cylinder?"

"Because you're lukewarm, not hot or cold, you'll spill out of my mouth like vomit."

"Before you there lie the Steppes, my darling—only the Steppes, the naked Steppes, the Steppes that are as bare as the palm of my hand. There live only heartless old women and rude peasants and drunkards. There the trees have already shed their leaves. There abide but rain and cold."

"Beggars, especially noble beggars, should never show themselves in the street; they should ask for alms through the newspapers. It's still possible to love one's neighbor abstractly, and even occasionally from a distance, but hardly ever up close."

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

"Being in love doesn't mean loving."