1. "A just cause is not ruined by a few mistakes."
2. “All the Utopias will come to pass only when we grow wings and all people are converted into angels.”
3. “But what can be done about it if the single and direct purpose of any intelligent person is to chatter, that is to say the deliberate pouring of emptiness into the void.”
4. “If you like a man's laugh before you know anything of him, you may say with confidence that he is a good man.”
5. "If you love all things, you will also attain the divine mystery that is in all things. For then your ability to perceive the truth will grow every day, and your mind will open itself to an all-embracing love."
6. “If the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.”
7. ”If you love all things, you will also attain the divine mystery that is in all things. For, then, your ability to perceive the truth will grow every day and your mind will open itself to an all-embracing love.“
8. “If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.”
9. “If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immortal, everything would be permissible, even cannibalism.”
10. "I have seen the truth. It is not as though I had invented it in my mind. I have seen it, SEEN IT and the living image of it has filled my soul forever..."
11. “Innovators and men of genius have almost always been regarded as fools at the beginning (and very often at the end) of their careers.”
12. "I think if the devil doesn't exist, then man has created him. He has created him in his own image and likeness." "Just as man created God, then?" observed Alyosha.”
13. “It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them -- the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.”
14. “It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.”
15. "Love all that has been created by God, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf and every ray of light. Love the beasts and the birds, love the plants, love every separate fragment. If you love each fragment, you will understand the mystery of the whole resting in God."
16. “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.”
17. “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking and applauding as though on stage. But active love is labour and fortitude, and for some people, too, perhaps a complete science. But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting further from your goal instead of nearer to it—at that very moment you will reach and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you.”
18. “Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.”
19. ”Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.”
20. “Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.”
21. “Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.”
22. “Neither man nor nation can exist without a sublime idea.”
23. “Oh, tell me, who first declared, who first proclaimed that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own real interests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage, he would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else… . Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child!”
24. “Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”
25. “The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.”
26. “The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.”
27. “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”
28. “The important thing is to stop lying to yourself. 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 as well as for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal, in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying- lying to others and to yourself.”
29. ”There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.”
30. “There is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and useful for life in later years than some good memory, especially a memory connected with childhood, with home. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if we have only one good memory left in our hearts, even that may sometime be the means of saving us.”
31. “Totally without hope one cannot live. To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that above the entrance to Dante's hell is the inscription: "Leave behind all hope, you who enter here."”
32. “We have come almost to look upon real life as an effort, almost as hardwork, and we are all privately agreed that it is better in books.”
33. “With love one can live even without happiness.”
34. “Without some goal and some efforts to reach it, no man can live.”
