Quotes from The Brothers Karamazov

Quotations follow the Constance Garnett translation (Modern Library, 1912) — our recommended edition.

1. 2

   It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket.

2. 3

   The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.

3. 4

   Above all, do not lie to yourself.

4. 5

   Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

5. 6

   Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side.

6. 7

   I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.

7. 8

   Fathers and teachers, I ponder, "What is hell?" I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

8. 9

   Hurrah for Karamazov!

9. 10

   In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, "Make us your slaves, but feed us."

10. 11

    Karamazov, we love you! We love you, we love you!

11. 12

    Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.

12. 13

    For know, dear ones, that every one of us is undoubtedly responsible for all men and everything on earth, not merely through the general sinfulness of creation, but each one personally for all mankind and every individual man.

13. 14

    Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything.

14. 15

    The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.

15. 16

    The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.

16. 17

    People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do.

17. 18

    Too high a price is asked for harmony; it's beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket.

18. 19

    I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring.

19. 20

    Feed men, and then ask of them virtue!

20. 21

    No one can judge a criminal until he recognizes that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and that he perhaps is more than all men to blame for that crime.

21. 22

    When he realizes that he is not only worse than others, but that he is responsible to all men for all and everything, for all human sins, national and individual, only then the aim of our seclusion is attained.

22. 23

    But active love is labour and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science.

23. 24

    I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong.