Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.

To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.

To love someone means to see them as God intended them.

I love mankind he said but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole the less I love man in particular.

The soul is healed by being with children.

What is hell I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

Above all dont lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him or around him and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.

Repeat to yourself every day and as often as you can O Lord have mercy on all those who will appear before You today. For every hour every second thousands of men leave this world and their souls appear before the Lord and no one knows how many of them leave this earth in isolation sadness and anguish with no one to take pity on them or even care whether they live or die. And so your prayer for such a man will rise to the Lord from the other end of the earth although he may never have heard of you or you of him. But his soul as it stands trembling before the Lord will be cheered and gladdened to learn that there is someone on earth who loves him. And the Lords mercy will be even greater to both of you for however great your pity for the man Gods pity will be much greater for He is infinitely more merciful and more loving than you are.

And if only fate would have sent him repentance - burning repentance that would have torn his heart and robbed him of sleep that repentance the awful agony of which brings visions of hanging and drowning

A fresh dream-fresh happiness A fresh rush of delicate voluptuous poison What is real life to him To his corrupted eyes we live you and I Nastenka so torpidly slowly insipidly in his eyes we are all so dissatisfied with our fate so exhausted by our life And truly see how at first sight everything is cold morose as though ill-humoured among us. . . . Poor things thinks our dreamer. And it is no wonder that he thinks it Look at these magic phantasms which so enchantingly so whimsically so carelessly and freely group before him in such a magic animated picture in which the most prominent figure in the foreground is of course himself our dreamer in his precious person.