Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov Quotes

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

Drive nature out of the door and it will fly in at the window

Loving someone is different from being in love with someone. You can hate someone you're in love with

They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown less.

Love the animals. God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Don't trouble it, don't harass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent.

Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.

But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road- there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt.

How good life is when one does something good and just!

Schoolboys are a merciless race, individually they are angels, but together, especially in schools, they are often merciless.

Woe to the man who offends a small child!

Ah, Misha, he has a stormy spirit. His mind is in bondage. He is haunted by a great, unsolved doubt. He is one of those who don't want millions, but an answer to their questions.

For if there's no everlasting God, there's no such thing as virtue, and there's no need of it.

Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly.

Equality lies only in human moral dignity. ... Let there be brothers first, then there will be brotherhood, and only then will there be a fair sharing of goods among brothers.

It’s not miracles that generate faith, but faith that generates miracles

I would give away all this superstellar life, all the ranks and honours, simply to be transformed into the soul of a merchant’s wife weighing eighteen stone and set candles at God’s shrine

You are really angry with me for not having appeared to you in a red glow, with thunder and lightning, with scorched wings

I looked at her for three seconds, or five perhaps, with fearful hatred-that hate which is only a hair's-breath from love, from the maddest love!

Do you know, Alexey Fyodorovitch, how people do go out of their mind?

Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort.

His mind is in bondage. He is haunted by a great, usolved doubt. He is one of those who doesn't want millions, but an answer to their questions.

Equality is to be found only in the spiritual dignity of man

I can't bear the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom.

You needn't be afraid of life! Life is so good when you do something that is good and just.

I love mankind, he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.

Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.

Men are made for happiness, and he who is completely happy has the right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.

Instead of giving a firm foundation for setting the conscience of man at rest forever, Thou didst choose all that is exceptional, vague and enigmatic.

I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who...prayed..with...unexpiated tears to 'dear, kind God!

Stupidity is brief and guileless, while wit equivocates and hides. Wit is a scoundrel, while stupidity is honest and sincere.

Man does not live by bread alone.

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

if [God] doesn't exist, man is the chief of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God?

Before it was just her infernal curves that fretted me, but now I've taken her whole soul into my soul, and through her I've become a man!

They suffer, of course... but then they live, they live a real life, not a fantastic one, for suffering is life. Without suffering what would be the pleasure of it?

In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden-the demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain

Too many riddles weigh men down on earth. We must solve as we can, and try to keep a dry skin in the water.

The monks used to say that he was more drawn to those who were more sinful, and the greater the sinner the more he loved him.

The sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of all sacrifices

He longed to revenge himself on everyone for his own unseemliness