Drive nature out of the door and it will fly in at the window

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.

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

Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.

From a hundred rabbits you can't make a horse.

Because I'm a Karamazov. Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I'm even pleased that I'm falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful.

People talk sometimes of a 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. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.