It wasn't the New World that mattered... Columbus died almost without seeing it; and not really knowing what he had discovered. It's life that matters, nothing but life - the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.

Every man looks out for himself, and he has the happiest life who manages to hoodwink himself best of all.

Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.

They won't let me ... I can't be ... good!

Reason and Knowledge have always played a secondary, subordinate, auxiliary role in the life of peoples, and this will always be the case. A people is shaped and driven forward by an entirely different kind of force, one which commands and coerces them and the origin of which is obscure and inexplicable despite the reality of its presence.

In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular actuality, vividness, and extraordinary semblance of reality.

Here my tears are falling, Nastenka. Let them flow, let them flow - they don't hurt anybody. They will dry Nastenka.