“Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles.”

— Dmitri, Chapter III. The Confession Of A Passionate Heart—In Verse

“God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.”

— Dmitri, Chapter III. The Confession Of A Passionate Heart—In Verse

“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.”

— Father Zossima, Chapter IV. A Lady Of Little Faith

“Every one of us is undoubtedly responsible for all men and everything on earth, not merely through the general sinfulness of creation, but each one personally for all mankind and every individual man.”

— Father Zossima, Chapter I. Father Ferapont

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

— Father Zossima, Chapter III. Conversations And Exhortations Of Father Zossima

“Too high a price is asked for harmony; it’s beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket.”

— Ivan, Chapter IV. Rebellion

“Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find some one quickly to whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.”

— The Grand Inquisitor, Chapter V. The Grand Inquisitor

“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.”

— Father Zossima, Chapter II. The Old Buffoon

“I gave an onion to a beggar, so I, too, am here. And many here have given only an onion each—only one little onion…. What are all our deeds?”

— Grushenka’s parable, retold in Alyosha’s dream, Chapter IV. Cana Of Galilee

“Some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days.”

— Alyosha, Chapter III. Ilusha’s Funeral. The Speech At The Stone

“For any one to love a man, he must be hidden, for as soon as he shows his face, love is gone.”

— Chapter IV. Rebellion

“If there’s no immortality of the soul, then there’s no virtue, and everything is lawful.”

— Rakitin, on Ivan’s theory, Chapter VII. A Young Man Bent On A Career