Fyodor Dostoevsky

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.

The centripetal force on our planet is still fearfully strong, Alyosha. I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves you know sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I’ve long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from old habit one’s heart prizes them. Here they have brought the soup for you, eat it, it will do you good. It’s first-rate soup, they know how to make it here. I want to travel in Europe, Alyosha, I shall set off from here. And yet I know that I am only going to a graveyard, but it’s a most precious graveyard, that’s what it is! Precious are the dead that lie there, every stone over them speaks of such burning life in the past, of such passionate faith in their work, their truth, their struggle and their science, that I know I shall fall on the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them; though I’m convinced in my heart that it’s long been nothing but a graveyard. And I shall not weep from despair, but simply because I shall be happy in my tears, I shall steep my soul in emotion. I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky — that’s all it is. It’s not a matter of intellect or logic, it’s loving with one’s inside, with one’s stomach.

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.

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

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

I used to imagine adventures for myself, I invented a life, so that I could at least exist somehow.

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

You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid — and I know they are — yet I won't be wiser?

It is amazing what one ray of sunshine can do for a man!

Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.

Be the sun and all will see you.

Don’t be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid - the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again.

Love a man, even in his sin, for that love is a likeness of the divine love, and is the summit of love on earth.

I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there - that is living.

Beauty will save the world.