It suddenly seemed to me that I was lonely, that everyone was forsaking me and going away from me.

On our earth we can only love withsuffering and through suffering.

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."

There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

Love is a teacher, but one must know how to acquire it, for it is difficult to acquire, it is dearly bought, by long work over a long time, for one ought to love not for a chance moment but for all time. Anyone, even a wicked man, can love by chance.

You cannot imagine what sorrow and anger seize one's whole soul when a great idea, which one has long and piously revered, is picked up by some bunglers and dragged into the street, to more fools like themselves, and one suddenly meets it in the flea market, unrecognizable, dirty, askew, absurdly presented, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid children.

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