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.

Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely.

The more stupid one is, the closer one is to reality. The more stupid one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence squirms and hides itself. Intelligence is unprincipled, but...

Eh, brother, but nature has to be corrected and guided, otherwise we’d all drown in prejudices. Without that there wouldn’t be even a single great man.

Man is a vile creature!

I believed, I believe, I want to believe, and I will believe

She enjoyed her own pain by this egoism of suffering, if I may so express it. This aggravation of suffering and this rebelling in it I could understand; it is the enjoyment of man, of...

Wer sich selbst belügt und seine eigenen Lügen anhört, kommt schließlich soweit, dass er keine Wahrheit mehr, weder in sich noch außer sich, zu erkennen vermag […]

Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference.

Generally speaking, our prisoners were capable of loving animals, and if they had been allowed they would have delighted to rear large numbers of domestic animals and birds in the prison. And I wonder what...

Since man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a...

It is different with the upper classes. They, following science, want to base justice on reason alone, but not with Christ, as before, and they have already proclaimed that there is no crime, that there...

I drink because I wish to multiply my sufferings.

I love mankind, he said, “but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.

The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!

How could I alone have invented it or imagined it in my dream? Could my petty heart and fickle, trivial mind have risen to such a revelation of truth?

Quanto mais gosto da humanidade em geral, menos aprecio as pessoas em particular, como indivíduos.

But what about me? I suffer, but still, I don’t live. I am x in an indeterminate equation. I am a sort of phantom in life who has lost all beginning and end, and who...

Everything which is of use to mankind is honourable.

Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.

Of course boredom may lead you to anything. It is boredom sets one sticking golden pins into people, but all that would not matter. What is bad (this is my comment again) is that I...

But twice-two-makes-four is for all that a most insupportable thing. Twice-two-makes-four is, in my humble opinion, nothing but a piece of impudence. Twice-two-makes-four is a farcical, dressed-up fellow who stands across your path with arms...

Christ is with you. Do not abandon Him and He will not abandon you. You will see great sorrow, and in that sorrow you will be happy. This is my last message to you: in...

There are strange friendships: two friends are almost ready to eat each other, they live like that all their lives, and yet they cannot part.

During these three months I have gone through much; I mean, I have gone through much in myself; and now there are the things I am going to see and go through. There will be...

Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that...