Fyodor Dostoevsky

Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end... but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature ... And to found that edifice on its unavenged tears: would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell me the truth! -

There is only one salvation for you: take yourself up, and make yourself responsible for all the sins of men. For indeed it is so, my friend, and the moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once that it is really so, that it is you who are guilty on behalf of all and for all. Whereas by shifting your own laziness and powerlessness onto others, you will end by sharing in Satan's pride and murmuring against God.

The stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The stupider one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence wriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.

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 ardor of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ.

Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those they have slain.

So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship.

[God] is a [useful] hypothesis to keep order in the world so that if he didn't exist, he would have to be invented. -

That's why I loved you, for your magnanimous heart! And you do not need my forgiveness, nor I yours; it's all the same whether you forgive or not, all my life you will remain a wound in my soul, and I in yours—that's how it should be...

It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.

The more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.

Beauty will save the world.

To love a person means to see them as God intended them to be.

Man is a mystery. If you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time.

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.

Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.

Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything.

The soul is healed by being with children.

At some thoughts one stands perplexed, especially at the sight of men’s sin, and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that once for all, you may subdue the whole world.

Much on earth is hidden from us, but to make up for that we have been given a precious mystic sense of our living bond with the other world.

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.