“Even a child could see the division between what the Galileans [i.e., Christians] say they believe and what, in fact, they do believe, as demonstrated by their actions. A religion of brotherhood and mildness which daily murders those who disagree with its doctrines can only be thought hypocrite, or worse.”
Source: JULIAN
“mesembrianthemum
should be so spelt. In a cumbrous word whose length can only be excused if it is at least significant to the learned, it is absurd not to correct the misspelling y for i; the y at once puts the Greek scholar off the track by suggesting embryo or bryony (Greek βρύω swell, burgeon), and forbids him to think of μεσημβρία noon, which is what he ought to be thinking of. When a word like rhyme that is familiar to everyone has settled itself into our hearts and minds with a wrong spelling, there is much to be said for refraining from correction; but with the y of
m.
no one has tender associations.”
Source: A Dictionary of Modern English Usage
“Because reasoning about causes and effects is a very difficult thing, and I believe the only judge of that can be God. We are already hard put to establish a relationship between such an obvious effect as a charred tree and the lightning bolt that set fire to it, so to trace sometimes endless chains of causes and effects seems to me as foolish as trying to build a tower that will touch the sky.”
Source: The Name of the Rose
“And, indeed, this is the odd thing that is continually happening: there are continually turning up in life moral and rational persons, sages and lovers of humanity who make it their object to live all their lives as morally and rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light to their neighbours simply in order to show them that it is possible to live morally and rationally in this world. And yet we all know that those very people sooner or later have been false to themselves, playing some queer trick, often a most unseemly one. Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself--as though that were so necessary-- that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point!”
“we are all divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less. We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have come almost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and we are all privately agreed that it is better in books”
Source: Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
“And with love one can live even without happiness.”
Source: Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
“Success is not a question of how much power or money you have acquired.
It is a question of how satisfied you are with WHO YOU ARE.”
“My God, but what do I care about the laws of nature and arithmetic if for some reason these laws and two times two is four are not to my liking? To be sure, I won't break through such a wall with my forehead if I really have not got strength to do it, but neither will I be reconciled with it simply because I have a stone wall here and have not got strength enough.”
Source: Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
“And who knows (one cannot vouch for it), perhaps the whole goal mankind strives for on earth consists just in this ceaselessness of the process of achievement alone, that is to say, in life itself, and not essentially in the goal, which, of course, is bound to be nothing other than two times two is four--that is, a formula; and two times two is four is no longer life, gentlemen, but the beginning of death.”
Source: Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
“This pleasure came precisely from being too clearly aware of your own degradation; from the feeling of having gone to the uttermost limits; that it is was vile, bit it could not have been otherwise; that you could not escape, you could never make yourself into a different person”
Source: Notes from Underground & The Double