Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor DostoyevskyThe Absurd is that upon which the world stands, and without absurdities perhaps nothing at all would happen.
Adaptation is inherent in man. He is a pliable animal, a being who gets accustomed to everything.
Adaptation is a necessary faculty of that scoundrel, man. He can grow used to everything.
The Animal is by no means the purveyor of 'bestial' cruelty that man is. No animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.
Atheism is, for the Russian, not a negation, but a new faith, something he 'believes' in.
Atheism is never a total renunciation for those who have renounced religion still follow the religious ideal in their inmost being. No person has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by christ of old.
Atheism seeks to replace in itself the moral power of religion (in order to appease the spiritual thirst of parched humanity and save it) by force rather than by christ.
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.
Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.
A Breakdown is never a thing one can predict. Often a man endures for several years, submits and suffers the cruelest punishments, and then suddenly breaks out over some minute trifle, almost nothing at all.
Brotherhood will not come to pass until we have become really, in actual fact, as brother to everyone.
Civilization has made man, if not always more bloodthirsty, at least more viciously, more horribly bloodthirsty.
Civilization merely develops man's capacity for a greater variety of sensations, and absolutely nothing else.
