#Quotes from Femi Osofisan's Women of Owu

Nowadays, when the strong fight the weak, it's called a Liberation War to free the weak from oppression. [8]

Nowadays, in the new world, it is suicide to be weak. [8]

I ask you- without a shrine, without worshippers, what is a god? [9]

Some words are such that when we hear them, all the light inside us dies at once, and our smiling daylight turns into the bleakness of night. [27]

I lit the torch so I will not have to grope my way to the camp where I shall be married to my enemy, that handsome butcher of our people. [27-8]

The gods! Which gods! Do you still trust any of them after this? Or have you quickly forgotten what they told us about Anlugbua just now? No, women, there is no shelter anywhere but in ourselves! Each of us has become our own god. [33]

Happiness is a fake. The gods employ it as a mask to trick us each time they are about to plunge us into grief. [37]

Don't speak like that, my child. Death is sweet, we think. But it is easier to talk of it, than to welcome it. We do not know what is on the other side, whether it is better or worse than here. Whereas even at its most bitter, life offers hope at least, which death does not. [41-2]

Even in misfortune, which levels everyone, the potions are unequal: we dare not tell you what we believe will becoming to us. [42]

My daughter, you won't like to hear this but my advice is- do like the reed in the bush. Stand and strut in good weather. But when it storms, learn also to bend. [42]

Anger and desire are twin sisters in this drama we call love, two kernels in the same nut! [48]

Anyone can kill. But it is not everybody who can forgive, or who can be just, as I know you are. [51]

An artist has only his dreams. He has no power. [52]

[T]he skin that graces the king's shoulders, the leopard knows who supplied it. When mother Goat nods at the sonorous sound of the drum, she is not dancing! It is because, each time it sounds, she recognizes the wailing of the leather! [55]

It is the fate of the conquered to toil for the strong! That is the logic of war, the logic of defeat! [55]

Beauty makes all women vulnerable to the greed of men [57]

War never ends, but only moves to another place? [58]

Let no one count herself lucky till she finds herself on her death bed. [60]

Home is where every traveller returns after a journey, however long. When night falls, the visitor must take his leave of his hosts. [65]

No swimmer, however good, can swim beyond the rim of the world. [65]

A father can only chew for a child; he cannot swallow for her. [66]
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#Quotes from Jane Austen's Persuasion

This is a popular book and so I did not set out to mark out every possible quote; they could be obtained at several outlets. However, there were those I just couldn't skip.

How quick come the reasons for approving what we like! [46]

There's hardly any personal defect, which an agreeable manner might not gradually reconcile to. [63]

I think very differently, an agreeable manner may set off handsome features, but can never alter plain ones. [63]

Personal size and mental sorrow have certainly no necessary proportions. A large bulky figure has as good a right to be in deep affliction, as the most graceful set of limbs in the world. But, fair or not fair, there are unbecoming conjunctions, which reason will patronize in vain, - which taste cannot tolerate, - which ridicule will seize. [92]

[W]hen pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure. [193]

You should not have suspected me now; the case so different, and my age so different. If I was wrong I yielding to persuasion once, remember that it was to persuasion exerted on the side of safety, not of risk. When I yielded, I thought it was to duty; but no duty could be called in aid here. In marrying a man indifferent to me, all risk would have been incurred, and all duty violated. [246]

Who can be in doubt of what followed? When any two young people take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other's ultimate comfort. [250]
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#Quotes from Permit for Survival by Bill Marshall

What I am trying to tell you is that the world is not small. It is a big thing with many people who are not the same. They are all different. And you will have to treat each one differently. That's the way to stay alive. You have to know the rules and apply them when needed. Otherwise, you will be a walking corpse, you will be living in a vacuum. That's the way life is; there are big fishes and small fishes. The big fish eats the small fish and the small fish feed on something else but they have to run faster to avoid being eaten by the big fish. [18]

Africans should eat good food to keep the nation healthy. And when the doctors said that folks must drink milk and eat eggs, nobody blamed them because they had never heard of inflation and the ordinary man. [26]

Some people had to die a little to re-emerge as better human beings. And come to think of it in much deeper perspective, some people die completely so that other people can become better human beings. That was what Jesus did, and that was what other lesser humans did after Him. [45]

Let's grow up woman, let's grow up. The world is not made up of pets who only know and understand love and loving. It is made up of human beings who want to go on living and therefore will make use of whatever life-sustaining things that God has created. [78]

The limits of an individual's ability are usually not known or fully appreciated by the individual himself. And like the old folks say, if a man is clearing the bush for a footpath, he cannot know if the path he has cleared behind him is crooked or straight. [95]

Advice by old men sometimes are given  through tales and adages. These have come down the ages and have been regarded as folk tales which are told to children or by children themselves. One such story is told of a traveller who, having covered the better part of his journey, came to a small river. He decided to sit at the bank of the river for the water to run out before crossing. He did not want his feet to get wet. Of course, the river never ran out and the man never reached his destination because he did not want his feet wet. [108]

A man without solid principles is like a goat who would drop his waste everywhere it sleeps. [113]
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#Quotes from Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People*

Ah! - one feels a new man after a meal like that. [12]

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm. [13]

It is astonishing how little most sailors care about what goes on on shore. [13]

Sailors are like birds of passage; they feel equally at home in any latitude. [13]

Oh well, it is better never to trust anybody; you may find you have been made a fool of before you know where you are. [23]

I am of humble origin, as you know; and that has given me opportunities of knowing what is the most crying need in the humbler ranks of life. [27]

Yes - and in my opinion a journalist incurs a heavy responsibility if he neglects a favourable opportunity of emancipating the masses - the humble and oppressed. I know well enough that in exalted circles I shall be called an agitator, and all that sort of thing; but they may call what they like. If only my conscience doesn't reproach me - [27]

There is one thing I esteem higher than that; and that is for a man to be self-reliant and sure of himself. [31]

Oh, the public doesn't require any new ideas. The public is best served by the good, old established ideas it already has. 36]

What is the use of having right on your side if you have not got might? [41]

When a man has interests of his own to protect, he cannot think of everything. [48]

I have already told you that what I want to speak about is the great discovery I have made lately - the discovery that all the sources of our moral life are poisoned and that the whole fabric of our civic community is founded on the pestiferous soil of falsehood. [69]

The most dangerous enemy of truth and freedom amongst us is the compact majority - yes, the damned compact Liberal majority - that is it! [71]

The majority never has right on its side. Never, I say! That is one of these social lies against which an independent, intelligent men must wage war. Who is it that constitute the majority of the population in a country? Is it the clever folk, or the stupid? I don't imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over. But, good Lord! - you can never pretend that it is right that the stupid folk should govern the clever ones ... [71]

The majority has might on its side - unfortunately; but right it has not. I am in the right - I and a few other scattered individuals. The minority is always in the right. [71-2]

The truths of which the masses now approve are the very truths that the fighters at the outposts held to in the days of our grandfathers. We fighters at the outposts nowadays no longer approve of them; and I do not believe there is any other well-ascertained truth except this, that no community can live a healthy life if it is nourished only on such old marrowless truths. [73]

The common people are nothing more than the raw material of which a People is made. [74]

[B]road-mindedness is almost precisely the same thing as morality. [76]

Happily the theory that culture demoralises is only an old falsehood that our forefathers believed in and we have inherited. No, it is ignorance, poverty, ugly conditions of life, that do the devil's work! In a house which does not get aired and swept every day - ... - in such a house, let me tell you, people will lose within two or three years the power of thinking or acting in a moral manner. Lack of oxygen weakens the conscience. And there must be a plentiful lack of oxygen in very many houses in this town, I should think, judging from the fact that the whole compact majority can be unconscientious enough to wish to build the town's prosperity on a quagmire of falsehood. [76]

What does the destruction of a community matter, if it lives on lies? It ought to be razed to the ground. [77]

You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth. [82]

Oh, well, let the curs snap - that is not the worst part of it. The worst is that, from one end of this country to the other, every man is the slave of his Party. [82]

To be called an ugly name may have the same effect as a pin-scratch in the lung. [85]

The worthy man spoke the truth. A party is like a sausage machine; it mashes up all sorts of heads together into the same mincemeat - fatheads and blockheads, all in one mash! [86]

Public opinion is an extremely mutable thing. [88]

A free man has no right to soil himself with filth; he has no right to behave in a way that would justify his spitting in his own face. [88]

It is a natural law; every animal must fight for its own livelihood. [95]

I only want to drum into the heads of these curs the fact that the liberals are the most insidious enemies of freedom. [98]

A party leader is like a wolf, you see - like a voracious wolf. He requires a certain number of smaller victims to prey upon every year, if he is love live. [98]

It is this, let me tell you - that the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone. [100]

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*An electronic version by the Pennsylvania State University; translation by Farquharson Sharp. Read the review here

#Quotes from Robert Musil's The Confusions of Young Torless

For early in the development of every fine moral force there is such a point, when the soul weakens, and that will perhaps be its boldest moment - as though it must first put down searching roots in order to churn up the earth destined later to support it - which is why adolescent boys with great futures ahead of them possess a past rich in humiliations. [24-5]

If Bozena had been pure and beautiful, and if he had been capable of love in those days, he might have bitten her, heightening both her lust and his own to the point of pain. For the first passion of the adolescent boy is not love of one, but hatred for all. That sense of being misunderstood, of not understanding the world, not only goes hand in hand with the first passion, but is also its only non-arbitrary cause. And it too is a form of flight, in which two people's togetherness means only the duplication of their solitude. [31]

Almost every first passion lasts only a short while and leaves a bitter aftertaste. It is a mistake, a disappointment. Afterwards one doesn't understand oneself, and doesn't know whom to blame. This is because the relationships between the protagonists in this drama are largely arbitrary: they are chance companions in flight. Once things have calmed down they no longer recognize one another. They become aware of oppositions between themselves, because they are no longer aware of what they have in common. [31]

Sitting by the open window at night and feeling abandoned, feeling different from the grown-ups and adults; feeling misunderstood by every laugh and every mocking look, being unable to explain to anyone what one meant, and longing for someone who might understand ... that is love! But you have to be young and lonely for that. [35]

He seems to me just to have been created at random, apart from the usual way of things. That is - even he must mean something, but only something vague, like a worm or a stone in our path, which we don't know whether to step on or kick aside. And that's as good as nothing. Because if the world-soul wishes one of its parts to be preserved, it says so more clearly. It says no, and creates an obstacle, it makes us walk around the worm, it makes the stone so hard that we can't break it without a hammer. Because by the time we go and get one it will have interposed a host of small, stubborn considerations, and if we can overcome them, then the whole business meant something else from the start. [60-1]

These grown-ups and clever people have completely spun themselves into a web, one stitch supporting the next, so that the whole miracle looks entirely natural; but no one knows where the first stitch is, the one that holds everything up. [91]

He did not think, with the affability that comes with moral reflection, of telling himself that after suffering a humiliation every human being has the potential at least to try to appear casual and confident as quickly as possible. [101]

[A]nything that looks big and mysterious from afar always arrives as something simple and undistorted, in natural, everyday proportions. It is as though an invisible frontier has been drawn around each human being. Something that has been prepared elsewhere and which approaches from afar, is like a misty sea full of giant, changing forms; what approaches the person, becomes action, impacts against one's life, is small and distinct, with human dimensions and human features. And between the life that is lived and the life that is felt, sensed and seen from a long way off, that invisible frontier lies like a narrow door, through which the images of events must cram themselves together in order to enter the human being. [120]

In solitude everything is permitted. [122]

And would you wish to count the hours of degradation that are branded on the soul after any great passion? Just think of the hours of deliberate humiliation in love! Those enraptured hours that lovers spend leaning over certain deep wells, or placing their ears to one another's hearts, listening for the sound of the great, unsettled cats clawing against the dungeon walls? Just to feel themselves trembling! Just to fear being alone above those dark, fiery depths! Just suddenly - out of fear of their own loneliness with those dark forces - to seek refuge within one another! [128]

Things happen: that's wisdom in its entirety. [143]

Because thoughts are something special. Often they are nothing more than accidents that pass away without leaving a trace, and thoughts, too, have their times to live and to die. We can have a flash of insight, and then, slowly, it fades beneath our touch like a flower. The form remains, but the colours, the scent are missing. We remember them word for word, and the logic of the sentence is completely unimpaired, and yet it drifts ceaselessly around on the surface of our minds and we feel none the richer for it. Until - perhaps several years later - all of a sudden another moment comes when we see that in the meantime we have known nothing of it, although logically we knew everything. [155-6]
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#Quotes from Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa's Indaba, My Chrildren - African Tribal History, Legends, Customs and Religious Beliefs

Her willpower shattered against the rocks of desire and went flying into a million shards of rainbow-coloured crystal. [99]

What deadlier betrayer is there than one's own body? What fouler enemy had the human being than desire that flows in his own veins? Marimba was lost. [99]

There is something known as hope, and that something has the habit of shining brightest when a man gets most hopelessly lost in the forest of fear and despair. Hope is a false star shining brightest on the darkest night of one's life. [108]

A man about to die loses all fear. He throws all respect and dignity to the Seven Winds and says and does exactly as he pleases, and Malinge did exactly that. [108]

Give a Masai a stone and he will hit something or somebody with it. Give him any piece of wood and he will turn it into a club with which to brain you. [112]

When one has slandered an innocent man for many days with intent to destroy him one becomes scared when one learns that all one's lies have been exposed and the victim's name cleared of all the slime one hurled at it. [119]

Lo! is it not said in our Words of Wisdom that 'evil hunts and destroys itself?' [121]

I, and the rest of my shackled race, led our lives like the beasts of burden we were; it was of no use for us to speculate or to dream, because daydreams make a slave's life more intolerable than the chains around his ankles and neck. [159-60]

The only purpose of Life is Death. A man is born and before he dies he gets the opportunity to ensure that others after him will also be born and die. You may deceive yourself by thinking that there is more to life than birth, growth, mating, old age and death. But, sooner or later, Naked Truth makes itself apparent. [174]

There were, there are, and always will be, those with feelings for others. [190]

My children, you cannot keep on storing up the wrath of a river without that river sweeping you along. [208]

There is nothing more saddening than a man deliberately blinding himself to the shimmering lake of reality. There is nothing more pathetic than the sight of a man who, on beholding a frowning mountain in the purple distance yonder, still insists that the mountain is not there - a man who, though standing knee-deep in a roaring river, still insists with stubborn conviction that he is standing on a sand dune in the Ka-Lahari. [211]

There is no rascal, however clever, who can be so clever as to lick the small of his own back. [235]

Strong are the Laws of the Tribe, but stronger still the laws of Nature. [261]

Fools are born to be tools of the wise. [268]

The gains of quarrelling fools become food for the monkeys... [268]

Death is death, regardless of the kaross he is wearing. [280]

The Universe is no place for Perfection and in the eyes of the Great Spirit, Perfection is as bad as Evil. Once a race has reached Ultimate Perfection it automatically loses its purpose - like a runner who stops when he has reached his goal as there is no purpose in continuing. [297]

Evil harms only those who look for it. [298]

When the bugle of pleasure calls from within the kraal of Life, I shall go in first - but when the drum of death groans from within the kraal, please, Oh Life, would you care to go first. [308]

You are beholding the knot in the Cycle of Life, and it is here that you experience the truth of the philosophy that Life is but Death and Death is but Life. One only lives to die, and dies to live again. [309]

The moment of glory for an evil man is very short indeed. [312]

Oh wanderer, lost in the Valley of Life, remember that nothing is ever what it seems to be, and seeing is not always believing. [315]

Great men, low men, fools and knaves

Chiefs or peasants, one and all:

Though thou boastest Thou art Thou,

Thou and all the rest are toys,

Dancing, capering, rising, falling,

In the mighty hands of Fate. [327-8]

Do dirty pots bring forth clean food? Do not the mortals say that rotten seed begets evil plants? [341]

Vengeance is the sweetest and the headiest mead in creation. Drink from the Claypot of Revenge and drink deep! Happy ... Happy are they who perish while avenging themselves on a hated foe! Happy is the one who will die first. [344]

So the great Lumukanda loves his own creation! Does a sane potter ever love the pot she has made? Does a wood carver ever love the image he has whittled out of the unfeeling ebony? Tell me, Oh my creator, my god and my husband, what is Love? Love is nothing but a euphemism for animal desire. Love is what a man feels for a woman before he takes her to the love mat. Love is only a form of hunger: a yearning to possess and to keep, and the interdependence of male and female beings. [375]

It is fascinating to see just how differently men feel the night before about their coming ordeal. The words so dear to beggarly story tellers: 'brave and fearless warriors' are but a putrid myth. No mortal is ever truly brave in battle and the picture often etched in our minds of a fearless and cool-headed warrior slaying a thousand of the foe is so much make-believe. [387]

On the eve of a battle a warrior is either as scared as a wet kaross or he is resigned to death, but determined to do as much damage to the enemy as possible before being killed. Very often this strange resignation to death and a raging desire to kill as many of the enemy before being killed, has been mistaken for courage. Once one is resigned to death and ready to receive it with open arms, one can still live to die peacefully in old age. [387-8]

We human beings, we ordinary mortals, should thank the spirits for the fact that one day we shall die. We should be thankful that we are not immortal. Life is a futile, senseless thing. Death is not evil; it is the ultimate relief from the pain and dreariness of life. A mortal man can at least struggle hard in the course of life to win himself fame and renown one way or another, so that when he dies men will at least remember his name, which is the only victory that one can glean from the stark futility which is life. But what does an immortal gain from Life? Nothing at all! Tribal wisdom says that all men should try hard to make their names famous for long after they are dead. I would rather lead a brief life and leave a name behind, than an endless one in lonely obscurity. [389]

An elephant's memory is as long as the Path of Life itself. Its invincible anger lasts for a hundred years at least.. [487]

We all eat and enjoy sweet things - like honey and ripe plantains. We enjoy chewing sweet cane, and we know that even sweetness can be revolting if there is too much of it. The same applies to beauty - if carried beyond the limit of its extreme it can be more revolting than ugliness. [493]

A man who lives with his soul and who lets his soul, rather than his brain, guide him, is better equipped to face the mysterious and supernatural things, because the soul understands these things while they bewilder the brain. The brain drags them into the quicksands of materialism. [612]

Where mind is master, Death recedes with all the terrors normally associated with it. [617]

The Wise Ones of our tribes say that the human race is such a troublesome and quarrelsome nuisance on this earth because people are born upside down. If Man were born right side up he would have his feet more firmly planted on the ground and he would have less rubbish in his head. And his head is full of rubbish - foolish notions, desires and motives that bring a trail of sadness, death and disaster. [689]
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#Quotes: Quotes from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn

You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. [P.1]

If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy - if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upward of a thousand places. [P.7]

I set down one time back in the woods, and had a long think about it. I says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don't Deacon Winn get back the money he lost on pork? Why can't the widow get back her silver snuff-box that was stole? Why cna't Miss Watson fat up? No, says I to myself, there ain't nothing in it. [P.15]

He had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body would 'a' thought he was Adam - he was just all mud. [P.35]

De dream say let Balum inves' de ten cents en he'd make a raise for me. Well, Balum he tuck de money, en when he wuz in church he hear de preacher say dat whoever give de po' len' to de Lord, en boun' to git his money back a hund'd times. So Balum he tuck en give de ten cents to the po', en laid low to see what wuz gwyine to come of it. [P.61]

Pap always said, take a chicken when you get the chance, because if you don't want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot, but I never see papa when he didn't want the chicken himself. [P.84-5]

Dat truck da is trash; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren's en makes 'em shamed. [P.111]

[A] body that don't get started right when he's little ain't go no show - when the pinch comes there ain't nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. [P.118]

If I never learnt nothing else of pap, I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way. [P.160]

'Tis my fate to be always ground into the mire under the iron heel of oppression. Misfortune has borken my once haughty spirit; I yield, I submit; 'tis my fate. I am alone in the world - let me suffer; I can bear it. [P. 163]

Cler the track, thar. I'm on the waw-path, and the price uv coffins is a-gwyne to raise. [P.181]

The painfulest thing out is a mob; that's what an army is - a mob; they don'g fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any man at the head of is is beneath pitifulness. Now the thing for you to do is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in hole. If any real lynching's going to be done it will be done in the dark, Southern fashion; and when they come they'll bring their masks, and fetch a man along. Now leave - and take your half-a-man with you... [P.188]

Cuss the doctor! What do we k'yer for him? Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town? [P.226]

A little thing like that don't cost nothing, and it's just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked. There warn't no more popular man in town than what that undertaker was. [P.232]

It was only a little thing to do, and no trouble; and it's the little things that smooths people's roads the most, down here below; it would make Mary Jane comfortable, and it wouldn't cost nothing. [P.242]

That's just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide, it ain't no disgrace. [P.270]

So we poked along back home, and I warn't feeling so harsh as I was before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehow - though I hadn't done nothing. But that's always the way; it don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn't know more than a person's conscience does I would pison him. [P.294]

So it was - I noticed it. Well, it does beat all that I never thought about a dog not eating watermelon. It shows how a body can see and don't see at the same time. [P.296]

The men was very huffy, and some of them wanted to hang Jim for an example to all the other niggers around there, so they wouldn't be trying to run away like Jim done, and making such a raft of trouble, and keeping a whole family scared most to death for days and nights. But the others said, don't do it, it wouldn't answer at all; he ain't our nigger, and his owner would turn up and make us pay for him, sure. So that cooled them down a little, because the people that's always the most anxious for to hang a nigger that hain't done just right is always the very ones that ain't the most anxious to pay for him when they've got their satisfaction out of him. [P.362-3]
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#Quotes: Quotes from Wole Soyinka's Kongi's Harvest

[A] King does not become a menial just because he puts down his crown to eat. [2]

A shilling's vegetable must appease a halfpenny spice. [2]

The nude shanks of a king is not a sight for children - it will blind them. [4]

It was our fathers who said, not I - a crown is a burden when the king visits his favourite's chambers. When the king's wrapper falls off in audience, wise men know he wants to be left alone. [5]

It is a mindless clown who dispenses thanks as a fowl scatters meal not caring where it falls. [5]

Only a foolish child lets a father prostrate to him. [6]

We lift the King's umbrella higher than men but it never pushes the sun in the face. [8]

The ostrich also sports plumes but I've yet to see that wise bird leave the ground. [48]

When the dog hides a bone does he not throw up sand? [48]

Age has shrunk the tortoise and the shell is full of air pockets. [55]

When a squirrel seeks sanctuary up the iroko tree the hunter's chase is ended. [58]

The bridegroom does not strain his neck to see a bride bound anyway for his bedchamber. [74]

If the young sapling bends, the old twig if it resists the wind, can only break. [74]

It's a foolish elder who becomes a creditor, since he must wait until the other world, or outlive his debtors. [74]
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Quotes from Mawuli Adzei's Taboo

A traveller who asks for direction to his destination does not lose his way. [13]

A dog does not chase after a fowl that picks its bone; it knows the fowl does not eat bone and will eventually drop it. [17]

[I]t is in the groove of the back and the synchronicity of the dancers' arms and elbows, as they enact their intricate embroidery of styles, that you know who the master drummer is. [20]

[W]hen a club strikes the forehead, the victim does not enquire of blood. [26]

Two pots, our elders say, do not spoil liquor. If one does, the other will not. [34]

According to the sages, good and bad news often travelled together in the same boat. Whichever disembarked first held the audience captive. [41]

It's from the elders that the youth must pick their honing further. Life is the same. The difference between the elders and the youth is that the elders are the forerunners and have garnered enough valuable life experience before the youth tasted the breath of life. [42]

It is the glitter of the ripe pawpaw that entraps the monkey. [43]

Crime is a complex phenomenon. Yes, when society talks about criminality, it is in the classical sense - criminality of little men as against criminality of the powerful. Criminality of the powerful - white-collar crime, organised crime and crimes of the state itself against its own people whom it is legally and morally obliged to protect - causes the greatest damage to the state and the body politic. [94]

He realized through that shadows were our flimsy second selves, cast by light hitting against any concrete matter, animate or inanimate, and that every shadow was dark, no matter how white the substantive object was. [134]

No one drinks medicine on behalf of a sick person. [141]

We all do sin. Your father used to say sinning makes us human, and I want to add that sinning helps us renew ourselves. You see, all life is birth, death and renewal. Watch every dunghill closely, where there's an accumulation of dead matter, that's where vegetation thrives best. It's all in nature. [157]

[I]f the father crocodile dragged you home to the depth of the river where he held sway, you were a toy in the hands of even his grandchildren - they could subject you to all kinds of indignities, including massaging your testicles. [171]

What kind of freedom, anyway? Look, prison is like a corn mill; even the hardest grain is eventually pulverised into flour and chaff. [202]
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#Quotes: Quotes from Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina*

All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. [1]

Yet, as often happens between men who have chosen different pursuits, each, while in argument justifying the other's activity, despised it in the depth of his heart. [16]

The aim of civilisation is to enable us to get enjoyment out of everything. [35]

Oh, you moralist! But just consider, here are two women: one insists only on her rights, and her rights are your love, which you cannot give her; and the other sacrifices herself and demands nothing. What are you to do? How are you to act? It is a terrible tragedy. [41]

You know that capitalism oppresses the workers. Our workmen the peasants bear the whole burden of labour, but are so placed that, work as they may, they cannot escape from their degrading condition. All the profits on their labour, by which they might better their condition, give themselves some leisure, and consequently gain some education, all this surplus value is taken away by the capitalists. And our society has so shaped itself that the more the people work the richer the merchants and landowners will become, while the people will remain beasts of burden for ever. And this system must be changed. [86]

What you are saying is wrong, and if you are a good man, I beg you to forget it, as I will forget it. [101]

No, joking apart, I believe that to understand love one must first make a mistake and then correct it. [135]

I think ... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts. [135-6]

By digging into our souls, we often dig up what might better have remained there unnoticed. Your feelings concern your conscience, but it is my duty is to you, to myself, and to God, to point out to you your duties. Our lives are bound together not by men but by God. This bond can only be broken by a crime, and that kind of crime brings its punishment. [144]

Woman, you see, is an object of such a kind that study it as much as you will, it is always quite new. [159]

Some mathematician has said pleasure lies not in discovering truth but in seeking it. [159]

Pretence about anything sometimes deceives teh wisest and shrewdest man, but however cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it. [263]

There are no Communists whatever, But scheming people always have invented and always will invent some harmful and dangerous Party. That's an old trick. [306]

Yes, if you had to carry a load and use your hands at the same time, it would be possible only if the load were strapped on your back: and that is marriage. I found that out when I married. I suddenly had my hands free. But if you drag that load without marriage, your hands are so full that you can do nothing else. [307]

The fact of the matter is, you see, that progress can only be achieved by authority.. [326]

The people are on so low a level both of material and moral development that they are certain to oppose what is good for them. [331]

I shall die and I am very glad that I shall die: I shall find deliverance and deliver you. [355]

He who desires a result accepts the means of obtaining it. [363]

While I was in doubt it was hard, but not so hard as it is now. While I doubted, I had hope; but now there is no hope left and all the same I doubt everything. I doubt everything so much that I hate my son, and sometimes believe he is not my son. I am very unhappy. [387-8]

One may save a person who does not wish to perish; but if a nature is so spoilt and depraved that it regards ruin as salvation, what can one do? [388]

Love them that hate you, but you can't love them whom you hate. [389]

I have heard it said that women love men for their very faults ... but I hate him for his virtues. [420]

He soon felt that the realization of his longing gave him only one grain of the mountain of bliss he had anticipated. That realization showed him the eternal the eternal error men make by imagining that happiness consists in the gratification of their wishes. [462]

For a moment he felt like a man who, receiving a blow from behind, angrily and revengefully turns round to find his assailant and realizes that he has accidentally knocked himself, that there is no one to be angry wtih and that he must endure and try to still the pain. [479]

He said, addressing himself to God, 'If Thou dost exist, heal this man (such things have often happened), and Thou wilt save both him and me!' [496]

It is possible to sit for some hours with one's legs doubled up without changing one's position if one knows there is nothing to prevent one's doing so, but if a man knows that he must sit with his legs doubled up he will get cramp, and his legs will begin to jerk and strain in the direction in which he would like to stretch them. [524]

What is dishonourable is the acquisition by wrong means: by cunning ... such as the profits made by banks - the acquisition of enormous wealth without work, just as in the days of the drink-monopolists, - only the form has changed. [581]

The first glass you drive in like a stake, the second flies like a crake, and after the third they fly like wee little birds. [666-7]

The one thing needful was to have money in the bank, without asking whence it came, so as to be always sure of the wherewithal to get tomorrow's beef. [667]

He wishes to give me proofs that his love of me must not interfere with his freedom. But I don't need proofs; I need love! [694]

There are no conditions of life to which a man cannot accustom himself, especially if he sees that every one around him lives in the same way. [696]

Before any definite step can be taken in a household, there must be either complete division or loving accord between husband and wife. When their relations are indefinite it is impossible for them to make any move. [728]

Respect was invented to fill the empty place where love ought to be! [733]

You see, he who sits down to play against me, wishes to leave me without a shirt, and I treat him the same! So we struggle, and therein lies the pleasure! [738]

Oh heavens! How many times! But, you see, some men find it possible to sit down to cards and yet be able to leave when the time comes for an assignation! Now I can engage in lovemaking, but always so as not to be late for cards in the evening. [139]

[T]he struggle for existence and hatred are the only things that unite people. [751]

And where love ceases, there hate begins [752]

Reason has been given to man to enable him to escape from his troubles. [755]

To free one's brothers from oppression is an aim worth both dying and living for. [769]

In an infinity of time, and in infinity of matter, in infinite space, a bubble, a bubble organism, separates itself, and that bubble maintains itself awhile and then bursts, and that bubble is - I. [777]

If goodness has a cause, it is no longer goodness if it has a consequence - a reward, it is also not goodness. Therefore goodness is beyond the chain of cause and effect.

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*Version translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude and published by Wordsworth Classics.
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#Quotes: Quotes from Nawal El Saadawi's God Dies by the Nile

The Sun rose up in the sky gradually. Its disc turned into a ball of fire, choking the wind, bearing down on the trees, turning everything into solid dryness, so that all things seemed to suffocate, burn in its red fire, and dry up, except the rivulets of sweat pouring down from Zakeya's face and body on to the ground. Beneath the sweat her face was livid like the face of the buffalo turning round and round in its yoke. [4]

[E]verything tastes bitter to the mouth of a peasant. [17]

Instead of painting her lashes with kohl, he had blinded her eyes. [17]

People have become corrupt everywhere,..., You can search in vain for Islam, for for a devout Muslim. They no longer exist. [20]

[O]ne cannot learn except at a high price. [37-8]

Since she was sure that the odour of godliness and moral uprightness smelt good and was pleasant to respire, she realized her nose was to blame for making the atmosphere around her smell like a latrine which was never washed down. [42]

In her ears echoed the words of Allah and between her thighs crept the hand of Sheikh Hamzawi. [44]

What matters is that we are all servants. No matter how high we rise, or how low we fall, the truth is that we are all slaves, serving someone. [68-9]

Suspicion requires that a man be endowed with a brain that can think. But these peasants! They have no brain, and when they do have one, it's like the brain of a buffalo. [69]

Those that go never come back, my child. [85]

I have not ceased praying and begging God to help us. And yet every day our misery becomes greater, and we are afflicted with new suffering. [86]

Her body was short and skinny with flat breasts, but her buttocks were big and shook violently as she whirled amidst the throngs of dancing people. [91]

Darkness lifted slightly and the light of dawn glimmered over the surface of the river revealing the tiny exhausted waves like wrinkles of an old, sad silent face that has resigned itself to its fate. [102]

[P]eople are like the waves of the sea, one can never tell when they might become stormy and why. [133]

And hunger makes a blind. It makes him see no one, neither ruler nor God. Hunger breeds heretics. [160]

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#Quotes: Quotes from Manu Herbstein's Ama - A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade

No one knows what the elephant ate to make it so big. [40]

The Tail of the elephant may be short ... but it can still keep the flies away. [40]

[A]t another's hearth, you do not have the same freedom you might have in your mother's kitchen. [71]

Chapel. You don't know what chapel is? That is their room where they go to worship their gods. It is in the charge of the chaplain, who is like a fetish priest for them, an Okomfo you know, except that he does not know how to dance. ... Sometimes the chaplain tells them stories which he says comes out of a special book. That books is one of their main fetishes. Mijn Heer tried to tell me some of the stories when we were married. Some were not bad, but most were rubbish. I told him he should listen rather to our Ananse stories, they are much more entertaining and there is always a lesson to be learned from them. [136]

De Bruyn had tried to fit her feet into a pair of his late wife's shoes, but the foot of a female slave who has walked many weary miles on her own tough soles is very different from that of the idle lady wife of a Director General of the Westindische Compagnie; and so, under her spreading skirt, Ama's feet remained unshod. [142]

Van Schalkwyk had a reputation in the Castle as something of a dirty old man. His penchant for making accidental body contact with female slaves and, believing no know else to be watching, for grabbing their buttocks or their breasts, had not gone unobserved. He was inhibited, however, from taking a concubine by fear of the consequences of breaching Company rules, by fear moreover that his status in the Castle would be undermined and by the certainty that eternal damnation would be his reward for fornication. Minister Van Schalkwyk led a secret life of unconsummated sexual fantasy. [143]

A lonely man, Quaque, too. He despises his own people for the heathens that they are. He is really a kind of black Englishman. He says the English tongue was sent by heaven as a medium for religion and civilisation. On that account he will not use his native Fanti and indeed he claims he can no longer speak it or understand it. [151]

He sees every female slave as just a vagina on two legs, she thought bitterly, not for the first time. [170]

She seems a sensible wench. However I must tell you that I disapprove in principle of teaching slaves and others of the labouring classes more than the bare minimum they need to perform their duties. It is in general prejudicial to their morals and happiness. It persuades them to despise their lot in life, rather than making good servants of them. Instead of wearing their yoke with patience, they become ill-mannered and intractable. [174]

Curiosity is unbecoming in the female sex. This girl's curiosity surely comes from your teaching her to read. An ability to read is prejudicial in any woman, in a slave doubly and triply so. It opens them to ideas unsuited to their station in life. [176]

If you examine the weapons closely you will soon discern the reason. Warfare is endemic on this part of the coast. Most of the slaves who come to us are prisoners of war. If we did not sell arms and ammunition, there would certainly be less warfare and the supply of slaves might dry up. There is, however, a distinction between between the quality of arms required for such local warfares as will ensure us a steady supply of slaves, and weaponry that might pose a threat to ourselves. Beyond that we do of course exercise some discrimination in the choice of our customers: we would not want even weapons of inferior quality turning up in the hands of potential enemies. [177-8]

"Maame," said Ama, "I saw the slaves arrive"

"Well?"

"I watched them with Mijn Here's telescope. I looked at their faces, one by one, as they came up from the bridge."

Augusta turned her head to look at Ama.

"And so?" she asked coolly. [178-9]

Sunday 10 a.m. Conducted morning service at 8 a.m. Gave thanks to God for the successful prosecution of this little adventure. Some ninety males, females and children were captured in the battle. Ten bodies were found and an unknown number escaped into the forest. The leader called Captain Tomba, was captured. He is reported to have put up a courageous and prolonged resistance, but that might well be an exaggeration designed to enhance the reputation of the victors. I have retrieved the four-pounder, resisting pressure to sell it to the local chief. Five of the attacking force succumbed and one of my men was slightly wounded. [216]

She chatted away to Tomba as she worked. Not since Sami's abduction had he felt the gentle touch of a woman's hand. He warned himself not to permit this woman's kindness to undermine his stern resolve to have no part in his own oppression; but then he weakened. What choice did he have, after all? [250]

The Angolans left immediately after the Mass. They had all been baptised en masse before leaving the shores of their native land. Each carried a certificate of baptism in the form of an imprint of the royal crown of Portugal, burned into the skin of their breasts with a red hot iron. This brand, Jacinta told Ama bitterly, served also as a receipt for export duty paid to the Portuguese King. [308]

Until we learn to read and write, we will never be able to defeat them and regain our freedom. But tell me, where did you get the book? [314]

Our greatest enemy is not the whites. It is our own disunity. They know that, of course, and they encourage it. Their Christian religion is one of the weapons they use to divide us. That, by the way, was why I disturbed you when you told me the book you were reading was their Bible. [326]

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#Quotes: Quotes from Bessie Head's The Cardinals (with Meditations and Short Stories)

You have a beautiful soul that was nurtured on a dung heap. [22]

I was thinking a while ago, Johnny, that half the trouble in the world is caused by the difficulty we have in communicating with each other. It's practically impossible to say what you really mean and to be sure that the other person is understanding you. Word communication is dependent on reason and logic but there are many things in life that are not reasonable or logical. A jazz musician can say something to me in his music but it would be quite beyond me to translate into words what he is communicating through music. What he has to say touches the most vital part of my life but I can only acknowledge his message silently. [24]

Do you think life will care about you if you do not show that you care about it? [37]

They pursued their love with a wild abandon, unprotected against the treachery of the insecure foundation on which it was based and too young to bridge the gap that would suddenly and unexpectedly fling them miles apart.

The greatest crime in this world is to be a moral coward. [49]

People don't fall in love these days. The movies have made that kind of thing stale. They have robbed us of our capacity to feel through feeding us with cheap sensation. Ask any man and he will tell you that he can't kiss his wife because she wants him to kiss her the way Richard Widmark kisses. [56]

A human life is limited so it has to identify itself with a small corner of this earth. Only then is it able to shape its destiny and present its contribution. This need of a country is basic and instinctive in every living being. [62]

The whole principle of living and learning is dependent on what is going on in the mind. The mind is like a huge, living tapestry. Everything we see, hear, learn and experience gets being imprinted on it. As we grow we begin to see that we can correlate those impressions into a definite pattern and so we call that our life. [65]

Life's one hell of a joke. It dresses us up with insatiable yearnings and high-flying ambitions and then flings the fact of our insignificance in our faces. Half of us fall for the joke and start the mad rush after the big prizes. Some, like you and me can't fall for the joke. We've been hit too hard at too early an age. [73]

Half of humanity is running like hell away from slavery while the other half is chasing behind, figuring out ways and means of maintaining the slave system. [75-6]

Above all the necessities of life, human beings need love and it is often the one thing most denied to them. [79]

You are young and might prefer to believe that love is moonlight and rosy sunsets. It is not. It is brutal, violent, ugly, possessive and dictatorial. It makes no allowances for the freedom and individuality of the loved one. Lovers become one closely knit unit in thought and feeling. Should you eventually find that this love is beyond your capacity or that you cannot rise to its demands, you may leave but please make sure that you go to some place where I will never be able to find you. [89]

Once a man involves himself with women there's always some kind of retribution. They're the most vengeful creatures on this earth. [99]

There's only one way to make yourself shock-proof. Do not be impressed by evil and do not be impressed by good. [100]

The task of the writer is to serve humanity and not party politicians and their temporary fixations. But it's a hard path to follow. I'm having headaches over it because I'm too intensely aware of the pressures and issues and yet at the same time wish to retain my right to think for myself. [100]

She was hardly conscious of her agonised cry as his hard kisses ravaged her mouth. For her it was like a dissolution of body and bones; with only a heart left; a pulsing heart awash in an ocean of rushing tornadic darkness; helpless at its own forward rushing... [115]

Life is not in bits and pieces. It is a magnificent, rhythmic, pulsating symphony. [116]

Life is a treacherous quicksand with no guarantee of safety anywhere. We can only try to grab what happiness we can before we are swept off into oblivion. [118]

Not now, not ever, shall I be complete; and though the road to find you has been desolate with loneliness, still more desolate is the road that leads away from you. It is as though pain piles on pain in an endless, unbroken stream, until it is the only reality. What do they do, those who love? [Africa, 121]

The only reason why I always admit pain is that it seems the only constructive emotion. [Africa, 122] 

A basically timid and cowardly person dare not presume to speak for others. He can only speak for himself. [A Personal View of the Survival of the Unfittest, 125]

There were once highway robbers, who said: 'Your money or your life!' Today, they say: 'Your politics or your life!' [A Personal View of the Survival of the Unfittest, 126]

Who am I? What am I? In past and present, the answer lies in Africa; in part it lies within the whole timeless, limitless, eternal universe. How can I discover the meaning and purpose of my country if I do not first discover the meaning and purpose of my own life? Today there are a thousand labels. One of them is 'crazy crank'. I do not mind being a 'crazy crank', as long as I am sure that I am a crank of my own making, as long as I resist environmental, societal, and political attempts to control and suppress my mind. [A Personal View of the Survival of the Unfittest, 127]

All life flows continuously like water in the stream and I am only some of the water in the stream, never able to gauge my depth. The hours, the years, the eternities slip by too quickly, moving, changing, never the same thing. I move with this current to the ocean only to be flung back again to the stream. The cycle seems unending, repetitive. [Where is the Hour of the Beautiful Dancing of Birds in the Sun-wind?, 128]

The holy order of doing the right thing is incompatible with love, which does all the wrong things. Love can never learn to choose the woman who has the highest price, or whose father possesses the greatest number of cattle. Love strikes the outcast, the beggar, the stranger, and leaves the dull, dead, complacent conformer to his safety. [Where is the Hour of the Beautiful Dancing of Birds in the Sun-wind?, 129]

The body is a positive thing, and love without a body is negative, useless, purposeless. [Where is the Hour of the Beautiful Dancing of Birds in the Sun-wind?, 132]

A woman is a maker of pottery, feeling life with her hands, keeping it whole, moulding it from the depths upwards. Her vision is constant, unchanging. [Where is the Hour of the Beautiful Dancing of Birds in the Sun-wind?, 135]
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#Quotes: Quotes from Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Karamazov Brothers [II]

But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find something that all would believe in and worship; what is essential is that all may be together in it. This craving for community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship they've slain each other with the sword. They have set up gods and challenged one another, 'Put away your gods and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!' And so it will be to the end of the world, even when gods disappear from the earth; they will fall down before idols just the same. [278]

For the secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for. [278]

Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering. [279]

Hadst Thou taken the world and Caesar's purple, Thou wouldst have founded the universal peace. For who can rule men if not he who holds their conscience and their bread in his hands? [282]

From the house of my childhood I have brought nothing but precious memories, for there are no memories more precious than those of early childhood in one's first home. And that is almost always so if there is any love and harmony in the family at all. Indeed, precious memories may remain even of a bad home, if only the heart knows how to find what is precious. [318]

One who does not not believe in God's people will not believe in God's people. He who believes in God's people will see His Holiness, even though he had not believed in it till then. Only the people and their future spiritual power will convert our atheists., who have torn themselves away from their native soil. [323]

Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another. [335]

[A] crime committed with extraordinary audacity is more successful than others. [336]

They have science; but in science there is nothing but what is the object of sense. The spiritual world, the higher part of man's being, is rejected altogether, dismissed with a sort of triumph, even with hatred. The world has proclaimed the reign of freedom, especially of late, but what do we see in this freedom of theirs? Nothing but slavery and self-destruction! For the world says: 'You have desires and so satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the most rich and powerful. Don't be afraid of satisfying them and even multiply your desires.' That is the modern doctrine of the world. In that they see freedom. And what follows from this right of multiplication of desires? In the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; in the poor, even and murder; for they have been given rights, but have not been shown the means of satisfying their wants. [346]

They maintain that the world is getting more united, more and more bound together in brotherly community, as it overcomes distance and sets thoughts flying through the air. Alas, put no faith in such a bond of union. Interpreting freedom as the multiplication and rapid satisfaction of desires, men distort their own nature, for many senseless and foolish desires and habits and ridiculous fancies are fostered in them. They live only for mutual envy, for luxury and ostentation. To have dinners, visits, carriages, rank, and slaves to wait one is looked upon as a necessity, for which life, honour and human feeling are sacrificed, and men even commit suicide if they are unable to satisfy it. We see the same thing among those who are not rich, while the poor drown their unsatisfied need and their envy in drunkenness. But soon they will drink blood instead of wine, they are being led on to it. I as you, is such a man free? I knew one 'champion of freedom' who told me himself that , when he was deprived of tobacco in prison, he was so wretched at the privation that he almost went and betrayed his cause for the sake of getting tobacco again! And such a man says, 'I am fighting for the cause of humanity.' [346-7]

Fathers and teachers, I ponder, 'What is hell?' I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love. [356]

[F]ools are made for wise men's profit. [393]

The jealous are the readiest of all to forgive, and all women know it. The jealous man can forgive extraordinarily quickly (though, of course, after a violent scene), and he is able to forgive infidelity almost conclusively proved, the very kisses and embraces he has seen, if only he can somehow be convinced that it has all been 'for the last time', and that his rival will vanish from that day forward, will depart to the ends of the earth, or that he will carry her away somewhere, where that dreaded rival will not get near her. Of course the reconciliation is only for an hour. For, even if the rival did disappear next day, he would invent another one and would be jealous of him. [426]

No, no, I've no money. And, do you know, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, if I had, I wouldn't give it to you. In the first place I never lend money. Lending money means losing friends. [434]

I don't talk about holy things. I don't want to be holy. What will they do to one in the next world for the greatest sin? [652]

You have uttered my thought; they love crime, everyone loves crime, they love it always, not at some "moments". You know, it's as though people have made an agreement to lie about it and have lied about it ever since. They all declare that they hate evil, but secretly they all love it. [653]

Many people are honest because they are fools. [666]

Besides, proofs are no help to believing, especially material proofs. Thomas believed, not because he saw Christ risen, but because he wanted to believe, before he saw. [715]

[H]e wrote when drunk what he had planned when sober. [791]

You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but 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, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us. [868]

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Quotes from Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Karamazov Brothers [I]
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Version translated by Constance Garnett and published by Wordsworth Classics.

#Quotes: Quotes from Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Karamazov Brothers [I]

It's impossible, I think, for the devils to forget to drag me down to hell with their hooks when I die. Then I wonder - hooks? Where would they get them? What of? Iron hooks? Where do they forge them? Have they a foundry there of some sort? The monks in monastery probably believe that there's a ceiling in hell, for instance. Now I'm ready to believe in hell, but without a ceiling. It makes it more refined, more Lutheran, that is. And, after all, what does it matter whether it has a ceiling or hasn't? But, do you know, there's a damnable question involved in it? If there's no ceiling there can be no hooks, and if there are no hooks it all breaks down, which is unlikely again, for then there would be none to drag me down to hell, and if they don't drag me down what justice is there in the world? Il faudrait les inventer, those hooks, on purpose for me alone, for, if you only knew, Alyosha, what a blackguard I am. [22-3]

It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact. Even if he admits it, he admits it as a fact of nature till then unrecognised by him. Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith. If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also. The Apostle Thomas said that he would not believe till he saw, but when he did see he said, 'My Lord and my God!' Was it the miracle forced him to believe? Most likely not, but he believed solely because he desired to believe and possibly he fully believed in his secret heart even when he said, 'I do not not believe till I see.' [24]

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. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself. The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than anyone. You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take offence, isn't it? A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a mountain out of a molehill - he knows that himself, yet he will be the first to take offence, and will revel in his resentment till he feels great pleasure in it, and so pass to genuine vindictiveness. [43]

Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God? [52]

I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labour and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science. [59]

The socialist who is a Christian is more to be dreaded than a socialist who is an atheist. [69]

As a thing falls, so it lies. As a thing once has fallen, so it must lie for ever. [93]

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. [114]

My rule has been that you can always find something devilishly interesting in every woman that you wouldn't find in any other. Only, one must know how to find it, that's the point! That's the talent! [147]

'But she has been crying - she has been wounded again,' cried Alyosha

'Never trust a woman's tears, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I am never for the women in such cases. I am always on the side of the men.' [212]

Hysterics is a good sign, Alexey Fyodorovitch; it's an excellent thing that she is hysterical. That's just as it ought to be. In such cases I am always against the woman, against all these feminine tears and hysterics. [212]

Schoolboys are a merciless race, individually they are angels, but together, especially in schools, they are often merciless. [224]

For our children - not your children, but ours - 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. [224]

You know, when children are silent and proud, and try to keep back their tears when they are in great trouble and suddenly break down, their tears fall in streams. With those warn streams of tears, he suddenly wetted my face. He sobbed and shook as though he were in convulsions, and squeezed up against me as I sat on the stone. "Father," he kept crying, "dear father, how he insulted you!" And I sobbed too. [226]

And I shall not weep from despair, but simply because I shall be happy in my tears, I shall steep my soul in my emotion. I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky - that's all it is is. It's not a matter of intellect or logic, it's loving with one's inside, with one's stomach. [252]

I think everyone should love life above everything in the world. [252]

You know, dear boy, there was an old sinner in the eighteenth century who declared that, if there were no God, he would have to be invented. S'il n'existait pas Dieu, il faudrait l'inventer. And man has actually invented God. And what's strange, what would be marvellous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man. So holy it is, so touching, so wise and so great a credit it does to man. [256]

[I]f God exists and if He really did create the world, then, as well know, He created it according to the geometry of Euclid and the human mind with the conception of only three dimensions in space.Yet there have been and still are geometricians and philosophers, and even some of the most distinguished, who doubt whether the whole universe, or to speak more widely, the whole being, was only created in Euclid's geometry; they even dare to dream that two parallel lines, which according to Euclid can never meet on earth, may meet somewhere in infinity. I have come to a 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 Euclidian earthly mind, and how could I solve problems that are not of this world? [256-7]

I think if the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness. [261]

Yours must be a fine God, if man created Him in his image and likeness. [261]

In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden - the demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat at screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain, the demon of diseases that follow vice, gout, kidney disease, and so on.

"Is it Thou? Thou?" but receiving no answer, he adds at once. "Don't answer, be silent. What canst Thou hast to say, indeed? I know too well what Thou wouldst say. And Thou hast no right to add anything to what Thous hadst said of old. Why, then art Thou come to hinder us? For Thou hast come to hinder us, and Thou knowest that. But dost thou know what will be tomorrow? I know not who Thou art and care not to know whether it is Thou or only a semblance of Him, but tomorrow I shall condemn Thee and burn Thee at stake as the worst of heretics. And the very people who have today kissed Thy feet, tomorrow, at the faintest sign from me will rush to heap up the embers of Thy fire. Knowest Thou that? Yes, maybe Thou knowest it." [273-4]

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Quotes from Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Karamazov Brothers [II]
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Version translated by Constance Garnett and published by Wordsworth Classics.