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'The Brothers Karamazov' Quotes

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  • "Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side."
    - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

  • "Hesitation, anxiety, the struggle between belief and disbelief—all that is sometimes such a torment for a conscientious man... that it’s better to hang oneself."
    - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

  • "In most cases, people, even the most vicious, are much more naive and simple-minded than we assume them to be. And this is true of ourselves too."
    - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

  • "Very different is the monastic way. Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet they alone constitute the way to real and true freedom: I cut away my superfluous and unnecessary needs, through obedience I humble and chasten my vain and proud will, and thereby, with God’s help, attain freedom of spirit, and with that, spiritual rejoicing!"
    - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

  • "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."
    - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

  • "I may be wicked, but still I gave an onion."
    - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

  • "A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying--to others and to yourself."
    - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

  • "Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those they have slain."
    - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

  • "So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship."
    - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

  • "If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground."
    - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

  • "Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are to blame for them."
    - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

  • "There are souls that in their narrowness blame the whole world. But overwhelm such a soul with mercy, give it love, and it will curse what it has done, for there are so many germs of good in it. The soul will expand and behold how merciful God is, and how beautiful and just people are. He will be horrified, he will be overwhelmed with repentance and the countless debt he must henceforth repay."
    - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

  • "Psychology lures even most serious people into romancing, and quite unconsciously."
    - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

  • "It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt."
    - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

  • "To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her."
    - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

  • "It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy."
    - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

  • "The more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity."
    - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov