Elle > Elle's Quotes

“The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.”
― Albert Camus

“Do you believe in God, doctor?"

No - but what does that really mean? I'm fumbling in the dark, struggling to make something out. But I've long ceased finding that original.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
― Albert Camus

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
― Albert Camus

“Do not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day.”
― Albert Camus

“The position of the Atheist is a clear and reasonable one. I know nothing about ‘God’ and therefore I do not believe in Him or in it; what you tell me about your God is self‐contradictory, and therefore incredible. I do not deny ‘God,’ which is an unknown tongue to me; I do deny your God, who is an impossibility. I am without God.”
― Annie Wood Besant, Annie Besant: An Autobiography

“The world stands on absurdities, and without them perhaps nothing at all would happen.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Don't think I'm talking nonsense because I'm drunk. I'm not a bit drunk. Brandy's all very well, but I need two bottles to make me drunk.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“...in my opinion miracles will never confound a realist. It is not miracles that bring a realist to faith. A true realist, if he is not a believer, will always find in himself the strength and ability not to believe in miracles as well, and if a miracle stands before him as an irrefutable fact, he will sooner doubt his own senses than admit the fact. And even if he does admit it, he will admit it as a fact of nature that was previously unknown to him. In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith. Once the realist comes to believe, then, precisely because of his realism, he must also allow for miracles. The Apostle Thomas declared that he would not believe until he saw, and when he saw, he said: "My Lord and My God!" Was it the miracle that made him believe? Most likely not, but he believed first and foremost because he wished to believe, and maybe already fully believed in his secret heart even as he was saying: "I will not believe until I see.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“[to Jesus] You did not come down from the cross when they shouted to you, mocking and reviling you: "Come down from the cross and we will believe that it is you." You did not come down because, again, you did not want to enslave man by a miracle and thirsted for faith that is free, not miraculous...I swear, man is created weaker and baser than you thought him! How, how can he ever accomplish the same things as you? ...Respecting him less, you would have demanded less of him, and that would be closer to love, for his burden would be lighter.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Every one is really responsible to all men for all men and for everything.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“And if it is a mystery, then we, too, had the right to preach mystery and to teach them that it is not the free choice of the heart that matters, and not love, but the mystery, which they must blindly obey, even setting aside their own conscience. And so we did. We corrected your deed and based it on miracle, mystery, and authority. And mankind rejoiced that they were once more led like sheep, and that at last such a terrible gift, which had brought them so much suffering, had been taken from their hearts.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“But you did not know that as soon as man rejects miracles, he will at once reject God as well, for man seeks not so much God as miracles.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Had you accepted that third counsel of the mighty spirit, you would have furnished all that man seeks on earth, that is: someone to bow down to, someone to take over his conscience, and a means for uniting everyone at last into a common, concordant, and incontestable anthill - for the need for universal union is the third and last torment of men.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“But when he know that he is not only worse than all those in the world, but is also guilty before all people, on behalf of all and for all, for all human sins, the world's and each person's, only then will the goal of our unity be achieved.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky