Drive nature out of the door and it will fly in at the window

Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don’t say that you’ve wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a...

It’s God that’s worrying me. That’s the only thing that’s worrying me. What if He doesn’t exist? What if Rakitin’s right -that it’s an idea made up by men? Then, if He doesn’t exist, man...

In the first place I spent most of my time at home, reading. I tried to stifle all that was continually seething within me by means of external impressions. And the only external means I...

I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and we’re both unhappy, and we both suffer.

Oh literature is a wonderful thing, Varenka, a very wonderful thing: I discovered that from being with those people the day before yesterday. It is a profound thing. It strengthens people’s hearts and instructs them,…...

My brother asked the birds to forgive him: that sounds senseless, but it is right; for all is like an ocean, all is flowing and blending; a touch in one place sets up movement at...

How good life is when one does something good and just!

It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young, dear reader.

Crime? What crime? … My killing a loathsome, harmful louse, a filthy old moneylender woman … and you call that a crime?

Do you know I don’t know how one can walk by a tree and not be happy at the sight of it? How can one talk to a man and not be happy in loving...

Oh, those grumblers! They all take principles as motives and dare not follow their desires.

His mind is in bondage. He is haunted by a great, usolved doubt. He is one of those who doesn’t want millions, but an answer to their questions.

Duhet te qendrojne larg njeri-tjetri si fatkeqet ashtu dhe te varferit, keshtu nuk do te rendoheshin nga njeri-tjetri. Ju shkaktova aq shume fatkeqesi, qe s’i kishit patur kurre me pare ne jeten modeste te vetmitarit....

Jeżeli ludzkość bez wyjątku raz wyrzeknie się Boga (…), to sam przez się, bez ludożerstwa, upadnie cały stary światopogląd, przede wszystkim zaś, cała stara moralność, i nastąpi wszystko nowe. Ludzie zjednoczą się, by wziąć od...

I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It’s not worth the tears of that one tortured child who…prayed..with…unexpiated tears to ‘dear,kind God!

…Imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably...

Be near your brothers. Not just one, but both of them.

But profound as psychology is, it’s a knife that cuts both ways (…). I have purposely resorted to this method, gentlemen of the jury, to show that you can prove anything by it. It all...

How can you tell a man there’s nothing to do? I can’t imagine a situation in which there could ever be nothing to do! Do it for mankind and don’t worry about the rest. There’s...

I tell you that man has no more tormenting care than to find someone to whom he can hand over as quickly as possible that gift of freedom with which the miserable creature is born....

If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.

For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build...

I am a wicked man… But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness? The whole thing, precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious every moment,...

Listen, in dreams and especially in nightmares, from indigestion or anything, a man sees sometimes such artistic visions, such complex and real actuality, such events, even a whole world of events, woven into such a...

We’re always thinking of eternity as an idea that cannot be understood, something immense. But why must it be? What if, instead of all this, you suddenly find just a little room there, something like...

Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly.

Never be frightened at your own faint-heartedness in attaining love. Don’t be frightened overmuch even at your evil actions. I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is...

Two and two do make four. Nature doesn’t ask your advice. She isn’t interested in your preferences or whether or not you approve of her laws. You must accept nature as she is with all...

Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it … one must have the courage to dare.

I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness- a real...

My sweetheart! When I think of you, it’s as if I’m holding some healing balm to my sick soul, and although i suffer for you, i find that even suffering for you is easy.

Oh, gentlemen, perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I’ve never been able to start or finish anything. Granted, granted I’m a babbler, a harmless, irksome babbler,...

What’s most revolting is that one is really sad! No, it’s better at home. Here at least one blames others for everything and excuses oneself.

And, beginning to grind his teeth again, Pyotr Petrovich admitted that he’d been a fool–but only to himself, of course.

One of the characters in our story, Gavril Ardalionovitch Ivolgin, belonged to the other category; he belonged to the category of “much cleverer” people; though head to toe he was infected with the desire to...

The poor girl ws keeping that student’s letter as a precious treasure, and had run to fetch it, her only treasure, because she did not want me to go away without knowing that she, too,...

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

The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.

Why did you come in to-night with your heads in the air? ‘Make way, we are coming! Give us every right and don’t you dare breathe a word before us. Pay us every sort of...

Though I do not believe in the order of things, still the sticky little leaves that come out in the spring are dear to me, the blue sky is dear to me, some people are...

A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.

We obtained literature by our own efforts, it is a product of our own life, and that is why we love it so much and hold it so dear, why we pin our hopes on...

Naten s’kisha gjume, me mbyste pendimi, kot thone qe pendimi te lehteson.

Ils verseront de sottes larmes et comprendront, que le créateur, en les faisant rebelles a voulu se moquer d’eux, assurément. Ils le crieront avec désespoir et ce blasphème les rendra encore plus malheureux.

My joy is that there is no such world at all, but that the substance of life is in everyone! There is no reason to be troubled because we are absurd, is there? For we...

in your face I seem to read some trouble of mind. When you came in I read it, and that was why I addressed you at once. For in unfolding to you the story of...

Nuk shquhej për zgjuarsi, por në mësime ishte i pari.

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

I looked at her for three seconds, or five perhaps, with fearful hatred-that hate which is only a hair’s-breath from love, from the maddest love!