Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” Quotes (166 Quotes)

And do you know, I came with horror to the conclusion that, if anything could dissipate my love for humanity, it would be ingratitude. In short, I am a hired servant, I expect my payment at once--that is, praise, and the repayment of love with love. Otherwise I am incapable of loving anyone.

But to fall in love does not mean to love. One can fall in love and still hate.

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

Humanity will find in itself the power to live for virtue even without believing in immortality. It will find it in love for freedom, for equality, for fraternity.

I want to suffer and be purified by suffering!

Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more. Such grief does not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense of hopelessness. Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to re-open the wound.

Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to the 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!

Stupidity is honest and straightforward.

There is nothing more alluring to man than freedom of conscience, but neither is there anything more agonizing.

Where did the light come from on the first day?

And even if one tried, it would be very hard to give a true account, for there were no thoughts in Ivan's mind but something very vague. He felt that he had lost his bearings.

By showing him so much respect, Thou didst, as it were, cease to feel for him, for Thou didst ask far too much from Him--Thou who has loved him more than Thyself! Respecting him less, Thou wouldst have asked less of him. That would have been more like love, for his burden would have been lighter.

For it will come to pass that even the most corrupt of our rich men will finally be ashamed of his riches before the poor man, and the poor man, seeing his humility, will understand and yield to him in joy, and will respond with kindness to his gracious shame.

I am a sick man...I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I think my liver is diseased. Then again, I don't know a thing about my illness; I'm not even sure what hurts.

I worship her, Alyosha, worship her. Only she doesn't see it. No, she still thinks I don't love her enough. And she tortures me, tortures me with her love. The past was nothing! In the past it was only that infernal body of hers that tortured me, but now I've taken all her soul into my soul and through her I've become a man. Will they marry us? If they don't I will die of jealousy. I imagine something every day...

Learning to love is hard and we pay dearly for it. It takes hard work and a long apprenticeship, for it is not just for a moment that we must learn to love, but forever.

Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to the animals, for they are without sin, while you, with all your greatness, you defile the earth wherever you appear and leave an ignoble trail behind you -- and that is true, alas, for almost every one of us!

That makes it worse! Worse and better!

There is only one way to salvation, and that is to make yourself responsible for all men's sins. As soon as you make yourself responsible in all sincerity for everything and for everyone, you will see at once that this is really so, and that you are in fact to blame for everyone and for all things.

While analyzing some already-existing opinions on the subject, he also expressed his own view. The main thing was the tone of the article and its remarkably unexpected conclusion.

And how are the other weak ones to blame, because they could not endure what the strong have endured?

By the experience of active love. Strive to love your neighbour actively and indefatigably. In as far as you advance in love you will grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul. If you attain to perfect self-forgetfulness in the love of your neighbour, then you will believe without doubt, and no doubt can possibly enter your soul. This has been tried. This is certain.

Forgive me... for my love -for ruining you with my love.

I am glad that at such a moment my young man turned out to be not so reasonable; the time will come for an intelligent man to be reasonable, but if at such an exceptional moment there is no love to be found in a young man's heart, then when will it come?

If he's honest, he'll steal; if he's human, he'll murder; if he's faithful, he'll deceive.

Let me be accursed. Let me be vile and base, only let me kiss the hem of the veil in which my God is shrouded.

Never trust a woman's tears, Alyosha. I am never for the woman in such cases. I am always on the side of the men.

The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the miraculous also.

There is strength to endure everything.

Whoever does not believe in God will not believe in the people of God. But he who believes in the people of God will also see their holiness, even if he did not believe in it at all before.

And in fact you're not like everyone else: you weren't ashamed just now to confess bad and even ridiculous things about yourself. Who would confess such things nowadays? No one, and people have even stopped feeling any need for self-judgment.

Do you know that centuries will pass and mankind will proclaim with the mouth of its wisdom and science that there is no crime, and therefore no sin, but only hungry men? Feed them first, then ask virtue of them.

Hate not those who reject you, who insult you, who abuse and slander you. Hate not the atheists, the teachers of evil, the materialists--and I mean not only the good ones--for there are many good ones among them, especially in our day--hate not even the wicked ones.

I am sorry I can say nothing more to console you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on stage. But active love is labor and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science.

If we're to come to love a man, the man himself should stay hidden, because as soon as he shows his face--love vanishes.

Let me be sinful before everyone, but so that everyone will forgive me, and that is paradise. Am I not in paradise now?

Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God's help I attain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy.

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself.

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

Woe to the man who offends a small child!

And is it only a dream, that in the end man will find his joy in deeds of enlightenment and mercy alone, and not in cruel pleasures as now?

Do you think it is a vain hope that one day man will find joy in noble deeds of light and mercy, rather than in the coarse pleasures he indulges in today -- gluttony, fornication, ostentation, boasting, and envious vying with his neighbor? I am certain this is not a vain hope and that the day will come soon.

He could not pass by children without his soul being shaken: such is the man.

I am too young and I've loved you too much.

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...Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and expiate not only your own sins but the sins of others.

Life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we refuse to see it.

Of the eternal questions, nothing else: is there a God, is there immortality? And those who do not believe in God will talk of socialism or anarchy, of the transformation of all humanity on a new pattern, which all comes to the same thing, they're the same questions turned inside out.

The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than anyone else. You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take offense, isn't it? A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a mountain out of a molehill--he knows that himself, yet he will be the first to take offense, and will revel in his resentment till he feels great pleasure in it.

They have this social justification for every nasty thing they do!

Yes, Lise. You see, your question whether we do not despise that unhappy man by dissecting his soul was the question of a person who has suffered a lot. I'm afraid I don't know how to put it properly, but a person to whom such questions occur is himself capable of suffering.