Tao Te Ching

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Brothers Karamatzov

By Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky

Dostoyevsky’s psychological, deeply spiritual, and captivating last novel; The Brothers Karamazov is called, “one of the supreme achievements in world literature.” The included poem, The Grand Inquisitor written by one of the characters, Ivan is described as ‘one of the best-known passages in modern literature.” Written as a newspaper serial and filled with philosophical depth, unforgettable characters, and psychological struggle; this book became a favorite of such diverse people as Vladimir Putin and Hillary Clinton, Albert Einstein and Laura Bush, Kurt Vonnegut and Pope Benedict XVI. Joseph Stalin read it many times and Hermann Hesse described Dostoyevsky as not a "poet" but a "prophet.”

Quotes from Brothers Karamatzov

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

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Themes: Integrity Lies

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“All that people seek on earth is someone to bow down to, someone to hand their conscience to, and some means of uniting all in one unanimous and harmonious ant-heap.”

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Themes: Control

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“all these punishments reform no one, and what's more, deter hardly a single criminal, and the number of crimes does not diminish but is continually on the increase.”

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Themes: Punishment Crime

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“Almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.”

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Themes: Conformity Fear

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“an original is in most cases the very essence of what is particular and apart from the commonalty”

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Themes: Creativity

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“And what's strange, what would be marvelous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man.”

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Themes: God

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“As long as man remains free, he stries for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship.”

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Themes: Religion

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“Believe but what the heart doth say
No signs from Heaven come today.”

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Themes: Belief

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“Better acquit ten guilty men than punish one innocent man!”

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Themes: Punishment

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“Everyone strives to keep their individuality, to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for themselves; but instead of self-realization, this only results in impotence and complete isolation.”

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“Everything is habit with men, everything even in their social and political relations. Habit is the great motive-power.”

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“Everything passes, only truth remains.”

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Themes: Change Truth

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“Everywhere these days, we have ceased to understand that we only find true security in social solidarity, not in isolated individual effort.”

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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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“For their happiness, we will seduce them into slavery with the rewards of an imagined but false heaven and eternity.”

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Themes: Slavery

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“I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.”

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“If everything on earth were sensible, nothing would happen.”

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Themes: Crazy Wisdom

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“If the evil doing of men moves you to indignation… understand that you, too, are guilty, for you might have been a light to the evildoers who might have been saved by your light.”

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Themes: Evil

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“If you know too much, you'll get old too soon.”

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Themes: Less is More

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“in some cases, it’s more creditable to be carried away by an emotion that springs from a great love, however unreasonable. And this is even more true for youth. An always sensible young man is suspect and of little worth”

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Themes: Crazy Wisdom

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“It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the riotous blood of youth.”

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Themes: Old Age

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“Let other nations think of retribution and the letter of the law. We will cling to the spirit and the meaning—the salvation and reformation of the lost.”

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“Life will bring you many misfortunes, but it is precisely in them you will find your happiness”

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Themes: Happiness

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“Like very many men is such cases, he put faith above all in change of place. If only it were not for these people, if only it were not for these circumstances, if only he could fly away from this accursed place—he would be altogether regenerated”

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“Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in all things.”

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Themes: Sacred World

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“Love both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing. and you will perceive the mystery of God in all until you come at last to love the whole world with a love that will then be all-embracing and universal.”

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“Love is such a priceless treasure that you can buy the whole world with it, and redeem not only your own but other people's sins. Go, and do not be afraid.”

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Themes: Compassion

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“Love is such a priceless treasure that you can purchase the whole world with it”

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Themes: Love

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“Love to throw yourself on the earth and kiss it with an unceasing, consuming love. Love all men, love everything. Water the earth with the tears of your joy and love those tears. This is a great gift of God not given to many. Prize it.”

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Themes: Golden Rule Love

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“men are made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I have done God's will on earth.'”

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Themes: Happiness

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“men love the downfall and disgrace of the righteous”

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“men love the downfall and disgrace of the righteous”

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Themes: Projection

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“miracles are never a stumbling-block to the realist... if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own sense than admit the fact.”

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Themes: Magic

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“Nothing has been more insupportable for man and human society than freedom… and what is that freedom worth if obedience is bought with bread?”

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Themes: Materialism

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“Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom.”

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Themes: Freedom

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“Only you must not be like everybody else, that’s all. Even if everyone else is one way, you be the only one not like that even if you are the only one.”

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Themes: True Self

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“People are more convinced than ever that they have perfect freedom, yet they have brought their freedom to us and laid it humbly at our feet… now it is ended and over for good.”

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Themes: Freedom

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“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.”

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Themes: Evil

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“Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of anyone. For 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.”

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“Respect alone isn’t enough for a happy marriage!”

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Themes: Marriage

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“Since the beginning of time, the craving for community of worship remains as the main cause of our suffering. For that we’ve killed and tortured each other, said ‘Put away your gods and worship ours or we will kill you and your gods.’”

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“socialism is not merely the labor question, it is above all things the atheistic question, the question of the tower of Babel built without God to bring heaven down to earth.”

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Themes: Socialism

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“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.”

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Themes: God Beauty

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

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Themes: Meaningfulness

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“The secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for.”

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Themes: Meaningfulness

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“The stupider one is, the closer to reality. Intelligence is a knave, it wriggles and hides but stupidity is honest and straight-forward.”

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Themes: Reality Paradox

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“The world has proclaimed freedom but what do we see in this? Our culture says, 'try to satisfy all of your desires and even multiply them' but what follows from this? In the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; in the poor, dissatisfaction, envy, and crime.”

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“The world says: ‘Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more.’ This is the worldly doctrine of today and they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.”

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“there is nothing higher or stronger and more wholesome and useful for life in after years than some good memory, especially a memory connected with childhood, with home... if we have only one good memory left in our hearts, even that may sometime be the means of saving us.”

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Themes: Forget Memory

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“They have managed to accumulate a greater number of things but joy in the world has grown less… Interpreting freedom as the multiplication and rapid satisfaction of desires, men distort their own nature for they thus engender in themselves many senseless and foolish desires, habits, and absurd fancies.”

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Themes: Wealth

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“They have science; but in science there is nothing but what is subject to the senses.”

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Themes: Science

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“Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute. Avoid being scornful, both to others and to yourself.”

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Themes: Deception

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“We are so habituated to satisfying our innumerable, self-invented wants that we quickly sink into a kind of slavery, disunion, and isolation.”

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“We don't understand that life is heaven, for we have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, we shall embrace each other and weep.”

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“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”

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Themes: Love

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“When he realizes that he is responsible to all men for all and for everything, for all human sins, communal and individual, only then will the purpose of a monk’s solitude be realized”

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“When our hearts grow soft with infinite, universal, unquenchable love and we realize that each one of us is responsible for all of mankind and for every individual person, we will have the power to win over the whole world.”

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Themes: Victory Power Love

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“With a cruel analysis that focused on the parts but overlooked the whole, science and intellectuals have left nothing of all that was sacred of old.”

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“You are working for the whole, you are acting for the future. Seek no reward, for great is your reward on this earth: the spiritual joy.”

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“Life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we refuse to see it.”

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Quotes about Brothers Karamatzov (1 quotes)

“The ideal man of the Karamazovs loves nothing and everything, does nothing and everything. He is primeval matter, monstrous soul-stuff. He cannot live in this form; he can only pass on... He reaches forth beyond prohibitions, beyond natural instinct, beyond morality.”

Hermann Hesse 1877 – 1962 CE
from Demian

Themes: Moral Freedom

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Comments (1)

  1. Shan Dao
    Shan Dao 6 years ago
    Einstein was a Dostoyevsky fan, said, "Dostoyevsky gives memore than any scientist, more than Gauss."