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"I have come to the conclusion that, since I can't understand even that, I can't expect to understand about God. I acknowledge humbly that I have no faculty for settling such questions, I have a Euclidean earthly mind, and how could I solve problems that are not of this world?"

"Eager to disconnect my mind from my desires, I had - as was my habit - personified that hated part of myself to distance it from the parts that I considered me. Just as I had create the happy to give myself someone to fight. It was a coping mechanism, and not a very good one. Better to see myself as the whole, bad and good, and work with the reality of it."

"And what do they talk about in that momentary halt in the tavern? Of the eternal questions, of the existence of God and immortality. And those who do not believe in God talk of socialism or anarchism, of the remaking of all humanity on a new pattern, so it all comes to the same, they're the same questions turned inside out."

"He stands on a firm rock, too, he stands on his sensuality - though after we are thirty, indeed, there may be nothing else to stand on"

"I shall steep my soul in my emotion. I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky - that's all it is. It's not a matter of intellect or logic, it's loving with one's inside, with one's stomach. One loves the first strength of one's youth."

"Isn't there in all our analysis - I mean you analysis ... no, better call it ours - aren't we showing contempt for him, for that poor man - in analyzing his soul like this, as it were, from above, eh? In deciding so certainly that he will take the money?"

"the children of the poor gentlemen looked down upon by everyone - know what justice means, sir, even at nine years old. How should the rich know?They don't explore such depths once in their lives."

"He might go quite astray in this maze, and Alyohsa's heart could not endure uncertainty, because his love was always of an active character. He was incapable of passive love. If he loved anyone, he set to work at once to help that person. And to do so he must know what he was aiming at"

"A man will fall in love with some beauty (a sensualist can understand that) and he'll abandon his own children for her, sell his father and mother, and his country, even Russia. If he's honest, he'll steal; if he's humane, he'll murder; if he's faithful, he'll deceive."

"Why had the holy father sent him into the world? Here was peace. Here was holiness. But out there was confusion, there was darkness in which one lost one's way and went astray at once..."

"'Brother, let me ask one thing more: has any man a right to look at other men and decide which is worthy to live?'
'Why bring in the question of worth? The matter is most often decided in men's hearts on other grounds much more natural. And as for rights - who has not the right to wish?'
'Not for another man's death?'
'What even if for another man's death? Why lie to oneself since all men live so"

"But I always liked little sidepaths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road - there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt."

"nagging of this old woman, who was apparently not bad-hearted but had become an insufferable tyrant through idleness."

"As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are too."

"It seemed as though I was always running toward Bella or away from her, never staying in place. I would have to find some way to hold my ground if we were ever going to have any peace."

"I abruptly yearned for sleep. Not for oblivion, as I had before, not to escape boredom, but because I wanted to dream. Maybe if I could be unconscious, if I could dream, I could live or a few hours in a world where she and I could be together. She dreamed of me. I wanted to dream of her. She stared back at me, her expression full of wonder, I had to look away. I could not dream of her. She should not dream of me."

“Peter and Charlotte had no intention of causing animosity with my family, but intentions were changeable things.”

"The future, she thought, could not be predicted, and the shape of things could not be divined. To think otherwise was absurd. But they were young that morning, and they could cling to hope. Hope that the world could be remade, kinder and sweeter."

"She opened it and saw the faint, dark marks of mold upon the first page. She turned the pages carefully. The interior pages were mostly intact, a few tiny spots on a corner or two. They made her think of snatches of Morse code. Nature writing upon paper and leather."

"It helped that he never noticed her small revelations, her little slips. He knew nothing about her. He'd created a Bella in his head who didn't exist - a girl just as generic as he was."

"But she didn't say a thing, because it wasn't really that bad a comment, a few words, and she didn't wish to start a fight in the middle of a dark hallway over what amounted to almost, but not quite nothing."

"'And you think you have a special power simply because my uncle thinks you possess a pretty face. But that's not power. It's a liability.'"

"Florence always knew how to cut you down with the succinct efficiency of a telegram."

"It wasn't such a bad place, she thought, once you got out of the house. It was the house that disfigured the land."

"She thought that men such as her father could be stern and men could cold like Virgil, but women needed to be liked or they'd be in trouble. A woman who is not liked is a bitch, and a bitch can hardly do anything: all avenues are closed to her."

"It was a picture of melancholy. Even the trees seemed lugubrious, though Noemi could not say why. Trees were trees."
It was the sum of it, she thought, and not the individual parts that made the English cemetery so sad."

"With each action you and I take, we vote for the kind of people we want to be and the kind of world we want to live in."

"At my church, we regularly sing a song in which the chorus repeats, 'God will delight when we are creators / of justice and joy, compassion and peace.' The first time I heard it, I was captivated by the idea that we don't have to settle for merely yearning for these things; we can also create them."

"When faced with an unexpected moment of decision, its easy to freeze. But to get to the other side where the good stuff is, you have to enter the messy middle of uncertainty and decision. The joy is at the end, and the only way out is through."

“Taking breaks sounds simple, but when we think simple isn’t effective, that’s when we start over complicating and overthinking. Our strategies don’t have to be complex to serve us well.”