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Although your mind works, your heart is darkened with depravity; and without a pure heart there can be no complete and true consciousness.
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What matters," said the prince at last, "is that you have a child's trusting nature and extraordinary truthfulness. Do you know that a great deal can be forgiven you for that alone?
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Existence alone had never been enough for him; he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was only from the force of his desires that he had regarded himself as a man to whom more was permitted than to others.
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Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely.
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Because I'm a Karamazov. Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I'm even pleased that I'm falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful.
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I am a sick man...I am a spiteful man. I am a most unpleasant man.
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For a woman, all resurrection, all salvation, from whatever perdition, lies in love; in fact, it is her only way to it.
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It is precisely that requirement of shared worship that has been the principal source of suffering for individual man and the human race since the beginning of history. In their efforts to impose universal worship, men have unsheathed their swords and killed one another. They have invented gods and challenged each other: "Discard your gods and worship mine or I will destroy both your gods and you!"
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My friends, ask gladness from God. Be glad as children, as birds in the sky. And let man's sin not disturb you in your efforts, do not feat that it will dampen your endeavor and keep it from being fulfilled, do not say, Sin is strong, impiety is strong, the bad environment is strong, and we are lonely and powerless, the bad environment will dampen us and keep our good endeavor from being fulfilled. Flee from such despondency, my children! There is only one salvation for you: take yourself up, and make yourself responsible for the sins of men.
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They were like two enemies in love with one another.
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A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments.
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It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.
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You must accept it as it is, and hence accept all consequences. A wall is indeed a wall.
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Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
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I drink because I wish to multiply my sufferings.
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My feelings, gratitude, for instance, are denied me simply because of my social position.
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Right attitudes produces right action.
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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 in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself, and every decent man has a considerable number of such things stored away. That is, one can even say that the more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind.
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Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.
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One man doesn't believe in god at all, while the other believes in him so thoroughly that he prays as he murders men!
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The Golden Age is the most implausible of all dreams. But for it men have given up their life and strength; for the sake of it prophets have died and been slain; without it the people will not live and cannot die.
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Neither man nor nation can exist without a sublime idea.
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For all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world.
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As soon as any one is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he's too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.