There in its nasty, stinking, underground home our insulted, crushed and ridiculed mouse promptly becomes absorbed in cold, malignant and, above all, everlasting spite. For forty years together it will remember its injury down to...

Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of any one. For no one can judge a criminal, until he recognises that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and...

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...

Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.

Because I’m a Karamazov. Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I’m even pleased that I’m falling in just such a humiliating position, and...

Feeling my own humiliation in my heart like the sharp prick of a needle.

Man is fond of reckoning up his troubles, but does not count his joys.

E ke vene re, Seriozha? Sikur qesh me ty duket, kurse ne te vertete nuk te qesh, te do…

Our historical pastime is the direct satisfaction of inflicting pain. There are lines in Nekrassov describing how a peasant lashes a horse on the eyes, ‘on its meek eyes,’ everyone must have seen it. It’s...

Here I, for instance, quite naturally want to live, in order to satisfy all my capacities for life, and not simply my capacity for reasoning, that is, not simply one twentieth of my capacity for...

The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.

I can’t bear the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom.

x” in an indeterminate equation. I am one of life’s ghosts, who has lost all the ends and the beginnings, and even at last forgotten what to call myself. You are laughing . . ....

The worst of such stories is that the triumphant romancers can always be put to confusion and crushed by the very details in which real life is so rich and which these unhappy and involuntary...

He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animated abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarize it and who caricature every cause...

It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.

perchè non c’è nessun altro dal quale andare! Bisogna pure che ogni uomo abbia qualche posto dove andare. Poichè ci sono momenti in cui assolutamente bisogna andare da qualche parte!

What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning…

Break what must be broken, once for all, that’s all, and take the suffering on oneself.

Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.

The Russian soul is a dark place.

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...

What is a Socialist?- That’s when all are equal and all have property in common, there are no marriages, and everyone has any religion and laws he likes best. You are not old enough to...

if [God] doesn’t exist, man is the chief of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God?

But in the end I’d marry her to the one she herself loved. To a father, the man his daughter falls in love with herself always seems the worst. That’s how it is.

The soul is healed by being with children.

I could have done even better, miss, and I’d know a lot more, if it wasn’t for my destiny ever since childhood. I’d have killed a man in a duel with a pistol for calling...

Why is it that when you awake to the world of realities you nearly always feel, sometimes very vividly, that the vanished dream has carried with it some enigma which you have failed to solve?

‎Kalganov ran back into the front hall, sat down in a corner, bent his head, covered his face with his hands, and began to cry. He sat like that and cried for a long time–cried...

Christ knew that by bread alone you cannot reanimate man. If there were no spiritual life, no ideal of Beauty, man would pine away, die, go mad, kill himself or give himself to pagan fantasies....

Alexandra, my eldest, here, plays the piano, or reads or sews; Adelaida paints landscapes and portraits (but never finishes any); and Aglaya sits and does nothing. I don’t work too much, either.

And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better – cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?

You think it’s because they’re lying? Nonsense! I like it when people lie! Lying is man’s only privilege over all other organisms. If you lie–you get to the truth! Lying is what makes me a...

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.

There is only one means of salvation, then take yourself and make yourself responsible for all men’s sins, that is the truth, you know, friends, for as soon as you sincerely make yourself responsible for...

Coming at twenty to his father’s house, which was a very sink of filthy debauchery, he, chaste and pure as he was, simply withdrew in silence when to look on was unbearable, but without the...

…There,in his foul, stinking cellar, our offended, down-trodden and ridiculed mouse immerses himself in cold, venomous and, cheifly, everlasting spite. For forty years on end he will remember the offence, down to the smallest and...

Yarının hiçlik olması tehdidiyle mutlu olamam ve olmayacağım. Derin bir hakaret bu… Bu yüzden, beni acı çekmem ve yok olmam için, fikrimi sormadan ve küstahça var eden bu doğayı; su götürmez davacı, savcı ve davalı...

If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.

What makes a hero? Courage, strength, morality, withstanding adversity? Are these the traits that truly show and create a hero? Is the light truly the source of darkness or vice versa? Is the soul a...

In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us.

Je n’ai gardé que d’excellents souvenirs de la maison paternelle; ce sont pour l’homme les plus précieux de tous, pourvu que l’amour et la concorde règnent un tant soit peu dans la famille. On peut...

Let me be cursed, let me be base and vile, but let me also kiss the hem of that garment in which my God is clothed; let me be following the devil at the same...

It was more difficult not tounderstand than to understand.

By the way, a Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow,” Ivan went on, seeming not to hear his brother’s words, “told me about the crimes committed by Turks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria...

…everything defiled and degraded. What cannot man live through! Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.

(…)man holds the remedy in his own hands, and lets everything go its own way, simply through cowardice- that is an axiom.

You don’t feed nightingales on fairy-tales

You are really angry with me for not having appeared to you in a red glow, with thunder and lightning, with scorched wings

You see, there’s a theory current you’re insane, or you lean strongly in that direction.