Fyodor Dostoevsky

If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.

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

To cook your hare you must first catch it.

When . . . in the course of all these thousands of years has man ever acted in accordance with his own interests?

Of course I shall go astray often...for who does not make mistakes? But I cannot go far wrong for I have seen the truth.

Taking a new step. . .is what people fear most.

Reason and Knowledge have always played a secondary, subordinate, auxiliary role in the life of peoples, and this will always be the case. A people is shaped and driven forward by an entirely different kind of force, one which commands and coerces them and the origin of which is obscure and inexplicable despite the reality of its presence.

If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery of things.

We are born dead, and we are becoming more and more contented with our condition. We are acquiring the taste for it.

If it were considered desirable to destroy a human being, the only thing necessary would be to give his work a character of uselessness

Love animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, don't harrass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you - alas, it is true of almost every one of us!

Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardour of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ of old.

If God does not exist, then everything is permissible.

The death of a child is the greatest reason to doubt the existence of God.

In order to love simply, it is necessary to know how to show love.

If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God have pity upon you. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and cleanse not only your own sins but the sins of others.

On our earth we can only love withsuffering and through suffering.

The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that's the chief thing, and that's everything; nothing else is wanted - you will find out at once how to arrange it all.

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.

There is not a thing that is more positive than bread.

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.