Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
... active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with the love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one's life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and eveyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and persistence, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Active love requires effort and persistence, unlike the idealized, dreamy love that seeks immediate gratification.
This quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky contrasts two forms of love: the idealized love found in dreams, which often craves quick validation and dramatic gestures, versus active love, which is a demanding process that requires hard work, commitment, and sustained effort. While dreamy love might seem appealing and romantic, the reality of active love involves navigating challenges and exerting continuous effort, highlighting the complexity and depth that true love requires.
Themes
Active LoveDream LoveCommitmentEffortPersistence
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about real relationships, this quote can illustrate how true love goes beyond mere affection.
More from Fyodor Dostoevsky
All quotes →What if, when this fog scatters and flies upward, the whole rotten, slimey city goes with it, rises with the fog and vanishes like smoke.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
But do you understand, I cry to him, do you understand that if you have the guillotine in the forefront, and with such glee, it's for the sole reason that cutting heads off is the easiest thing, and having an idea is difficult!
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
...to return to their 'native soil,' as they say, to the bosom, so to speak, of their mother earth, like frightened children, yearning to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their decrepit mother, and to sleep there for ever, only to escape the horrors that terrify them.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Similar quotes
You had my heart inside of your hand but you played it to the beat
AdeleRead
The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface: and why not? Any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a person's nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell.
Truman CapoteRead
Go on loving what is good, simple, and ordinary.
Rainer Maria RilkeRead
That man that hath a tongue, I say is no man, if with his tongue he cannot win a woman.
William ShakespeareRead
Heaven will be no heaven to me if I do not meet my wife there.
Andrew JacksonRead
When we see the Beloved in each person, it's like walking through a garden, watching flowers bloom all around us.
Ram DassRead