You pass by a little child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You don't know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love.
Fyodor DostoevskyYou see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, thereโs no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of manโs nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. And although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply extracting square roots.
Fyodor DostoevskyTo care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether itโs good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things.
Fyodor DostoevskyAt first, art imitates life. Then life will imitate art.Then life will find its very existence from the arts.
Fyodor DostoevskyTherefore, in my incontrovertible capacity as plaintiff and defendant judge and accused, I condemn this nature, which has so brazenly and unceremoniously inflicted this suffering... since I am unable to destroy Nature, I am destroying myself, solely out of weariness of having to endure a tyranny in which there is no guilty party.
Fyodor Dostoevsky