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
Since man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a rebel.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Humans create their own beliefs and miracles to cope with the need for meaning.
This quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky highlights the inherent human desire for miracles and extraordinary experiences. It suggests that when faced with the mundane reality of life, individuals often resort to creating their own 'miracles,' whether through belief in the supernatural or other extraordinary concepts, despite their rational inclinations or belief systems. This reflects a deep psychological need to find meaning and wonder in existence.
Themes
MiraclesBeliefHuman NatureMeaningIllusion
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about the importance of belief systems in human experience.
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.
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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
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For to accuse requires less eloquence, such is man's nature, than to excuse; and condemnation, than absolution, more resembles justice.
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Without holiness on earth we shall never be prepared to enjoy heaven. Heaven is a holy place. The Lord of heaven is a holy Being. The angels are holy creatures. Holiness is written on everything in heaven... How shall we ever be at home and happy in heaven if we die unholy?
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I had a thought, on the way home from the rock field, that the things we don't know about a person are the things that make them human, and it made me feel sad to think that, but sad in that reassuring way that some sadness has, a sadness that says welcome home in twelve different languages.
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Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly color. I'm so glad I'm a Beta.
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Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them. Stretch it as thin as the temple flesh of an ailing woman and still it serves to ache the bone and to move the bone about; and in like manner the night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in a torment. We will find no comfort until the night melts away; until the fury of the night rots out its fire.
Djuna BarnesRead
History is for human self-knowledge. Knowing yourself means knowing, first, what it is to be a person; secondly, knowing what it is to be the kind of person you are; and thirdly, knowing what it is to be the person you are and nobody else is. Knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since nobody knows what they can do until they try, the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.
Robin G. CollingwoodRead