I’ve just finished reading The Idiot by Dostoevsky. A brilliant read. Filled with twists and turns and a most unforeseen and shocking conclusion, I would have to say that it is my favorite writing by Dostoyevsky.
Here are some great quotes from the book; some are delightful for the use of words, others are simply thought-provoking:
“In a word, the world spoke well of the girls; but they were not without their enemies, and occasionally people talked with horror of the number of books they had read.”
“This writing allows for flourishesp; now a flourish is a dangerous thing! Its use requires such taste, but, if successful, what a distinction it gives to the whole!”
“But I don’t know HOW to see!”
“The first qualification for understanding another is Heart.”
“A fool with a heart and no brains is just as unhappy as a fool with brains and no heart.”
“Exactly as is a mother’s joy when her baby smiles for the first time into her eyes, so is God’s joy when one of His children turns and prays to Him for the first time, with all his heart!”
“Let me add to this that in every idea emanating from genius, or even in every serious human idea-born in the human brain-there always remains something-some sediment-which cannot be expressed to others, though one wrote volumes and lectured upon it for five and thirty years. There is always a something, a remnant, which will never come out from your brain, but will remain there with you, and you alone forever and ever, and you will die perhaps, without having imparted what may be the very essence of your idea to a single living soul.”
We degrade God when we attribute our own ideas to Him, out of annoyance that we cannot fathom His ways
