I swear to you, sirs, that excessive consciousness is a disease--a genuine, absolute disease.

Know, then, that now, precisely now, these people are more certain than ever before that they are completely free, and at the same time they themselves have brought us their freedom and obediently laid it at our feet. It is our doing, but is it what you wanted? This sort of freedom?' Again I don't understand', Alyosha interrupted, 'Is he being ironic? Is he laughing?' Not in the least. He precisely lays it to his and his colleagues' credit that they have finally overcome freedom, and have done so in order to make people happy.

They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?

I know that you don't believe it, but indeed, life will bring you through. You will live it down in time. What you need now is fresh air, fresh air, fresh air!

People really do like seeing their best friends humiliated; a large part of the friendship is based on humiliation; and that is an old truth,well known to all intelligent people.

One can fall in love and still hate.

Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.