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
I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there - that is living.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses faith in the existence of hope and light, even in darkness.
Dostoevsky suggests that the awareness of something positive, like the sun, exists even when we cannot perceive it directly. This represents a deeper understanding of life, where hope and purpose persist despite challenges or hardships.
Themes
HopeFaithExistenceLightLife
In practice
Example use cases
In a graduation speech, to inspire students facing uncertain futures.
More from Fyodor Dostoevsky
All quotes βWhat 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
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It is crucial that we develop real awareness of ourselves as citizens of Earth, linked by mutual and indissoluble bonds. When we clearly recognize this reality and ground ourselves in it, we are compelled to take a strict accounting of our way of life.
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A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
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An armchair Jungian would say the whole thing is about my own ongoing spiritual search. My interior life has always been one of trying to find a spiritual link, maybe because I'm from a family of separate religious philosophies: Protestant and Catholic.
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We cannot change ideas in the minds of men and races with machine guns or battle ships.
Herbert HooverRead