[The Devil] This legend is about paradise. There was, they say, a certain thinker and philospher here on your earth, who 'rejected all--laws, conscience faith, and, above all, the future life. He died...
You laugh like a little child, but you think like a martyr.
You are really angry with me for not having appeared to you in a red glow, with thunder and lightning, with scorched wings
Yes, yes, it ended in my corrupting them all! How it couldcome to pass I do not know, but I remember it clearly. Thedream embraced thousands of years and left in me only asense of the whole. I only kn...
When reason fails, the devil helps! he thought with a strange grin. This chance raised his spirits extraordinarily.
What’s more, the awareness I have that no matter how ridiculous and humiliated I may seem, there lies within me that treasure of strength which will someday make them all change their opinion of me, t...
What is the mother of God? What do you think?' 'The great mother,' I answer, 'the hope of the human race.' 'Yes,' she answered, 'the mother of God is the great mother—the damp earth, and therein lies...
We've all grown unaccustomed to life, we're all lame, each of us more or less. We've even grown so unaccustomed that at times we feel a sort of loathing for real living life, and therefore cannot bear...
Two abysses, gentlemen of the jury, remember that Karamazov can contemplate two abysses, and both at the same time.
Truly,' I answered him, 'all things are good and fair, because all is truth. Look,' said I, 'at the horse, that great beast that is so near to man; or the lowly, pensive ox, which feeds him and works...
They won't let me ... I can't be ... good!
They say that people standing on a height have an impulse to throw themselves down. I imagine that many suicides and murders have been committed simply because the revolver has been in the hand. It is...
They have science, but science contains nothing that does not come through the senses. The spiritual world, the nobler side of man’s being, has been rejected altogether, banned as it were triumphantly...
There’s the Holy Ghost and there’s the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit can appear as other birds- sometimes as a swallow, sometimes a goldfinch and sometimes as a blue-tit. How do you know him from an or...
There is a remarkable picture called 'Contemplation.' It shows a forest in winter and on a roadway through the forest, in absolute solitude, stands a peasant in a torn kaftan and bark shoes. he stands...
The stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The stupider one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence wriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave, but s...
The question is not resolved in you, and there lies your great grief, for it urgently demands resolution...Even if it cannot be resolved in a positive way, it will never be resolved in the negative wa...
The marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage beast as man. So holy it is, so touching, so wise and so great a credit is to man.
The latter are to lose their individuality and turn into something like cattle, and with this unlimited obedience attain, through a series of regenerations, a primordial innocence, something like the...
The complete atheist stands on the next-to-last highest rung leading to the fullest and most complete faith (he may take that step, or he may not), but the indifferent man has no faith at all, except...