Demons Dostoevsky Quotes

God is the pain of the fear of death

Do you believe in a future everlasting life? No, not in a future everlasting but in an everlasting life here. There are moments, you reach moments, and time comes to a sudden stop, and it will become eternal.

You cannot imagine what sorrow and anger seize one's whole soul when a great idea, which one has long and piously revered, is picked up by some bunglers and dragged into the street, to more fools like themselves, and one suddenly meets it in the flea market, unrecognizable, dirty, askew, absurdly presented, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid children.

So, according to you, the other God does exist after all?' 'He doesn't exist, but He is. There's no pain in a stone, but there's pain in the fear of a stone.

You’re very clever and learned, but you know nothing at all about life.

...and in fact I've noticed that faith always seems to be less in the daytime

Life is now given to man at the cost of pain and fear. Here, they are blinded by this sometimes. Now man is not yet that man. There will be another, new person, happy and proud, and for him it wouldn’t matter the death-life. He who overcomes pain and fear will become God himself. There will not be that God any longer.

We are all to blame, we are all to blame … and if only all were convinced of it!

Dostoevsky’s Demons.

There are crimes that are truly uncomely. With crimes, whatever they may be, the more blood, the more horror there is, the more imposing they are, the more picturesque, so to speak, but there are crimes that are shameful, disgraceful, all horror aside, so to speak, even far too ungracious...

I don’t understand how, up to now, an atheist could know there is no God and not kill himself at once. To recognize that there is no God, and not to recognize at the same time that you have become God, is an absurdity, otherwise you must necessarily kill yourself. Once you recognize it, you are king, and you will not kill yourself but will live in the chiefest glory. But one, the one who is first, must necessarily kill himself, otherwise who will begin and prove it? It is I who will necessarily kill myself in order to begin and prove it. I am still God against my will, and I am unhappy, because it is my duty to proclaim self-will. Everyone is unhappy, because everyone is afraid to proclaim self-will. That is why man has been so unhappy and poor up to now, because he was afraid to proclaim the chief point of self-will and was self-willed only on the margins, like a schoolboy. I am terribly unhappy, because I am terribly afraid. Fear is man’s curse … But I will proclaim self-will, it is my duty to believe that I do not believe. I will begin, and end, and open the door. And save. Only this one thing will save all men and in the next generation transform them physically; for in the present physical aspect, so far as I have thought, it is in no way possible for man to be without the former God. For three years I have been searching for the attribute of my divinity, and I have found it: the attribute of my divinity is—Self-will! That is all, by which I can show in the main point my insubordination and my new fearsome freedom. For it is very fearsome. I kill myself to show my insubordination and my new fearsome freedom.” Dostoevsky, Fyodor (2010-05-06). Demons (Vintage Classics) (p. 619). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

And those who have no people, have no God! You may be sure that all those who cease to understand their people and lose their connection with them, at once, in the same measure, also lose the faith of their fathers, and become either atheists or indifferent.

local Jews, who, over the past two years, as if on purpose, had been settling in terrible quantities in our town,

There are strange friendships,” Dostoevsky writes, with reference to Stepan Trofimovich and Varvara Petrovna in Demons. “Two friends are almost ready to eat each other, they live like that all their lives, and yet they cannot part. Parting is even impossible: the friend who waxes capricious and breaks it off will be the first to fall sick and die.” A marvelous passage, communicating so economically the diabolical undercurrent of certain friendships, their weird fatalism.

The first discovery of Dostoievsky is, for a spiritual adventurer, such a shock as is not likely to occur again. One is staggered, bewildered, insulted. It is like a hit in the face, at the end of a dark passage; a hit in the face, followed by the fumbling of strange hands at one's throat. Everything that has been forbidden, by discretion, by caution, by self-respect, by atavistic inhibition, seems suddenly to leap up out of the darkness and seize upon one with fierce, indescribable caresses. 　　All that one has felt, but has not dared to think; all that one has thought, but has not dared to say; all the terrible whispers from the unspeakable margins; all the horrible wreckage and silt from the unsounded depths, float in upon us and overpower us. There is so much that the other writers, even the realists among them, cannot, will not, say. There is so much that the normal self-preservative instincts in ourselves do not want said. But this Russian has no mercy. Such exposures humiliate and disgrace? What matter? It is well that we should be so laid bare. Such revelations provoke and embarrass? What matter? We require embarrassment. The quicksilver of human consciousness must have no closed chinks, no blind alleys. It must be compelled to reform its microcosmic reflections, even down there, where it has to be driven by force. It is extraordinary how superficial even the great writers are; how lacking in the Mole's claws, in the Woodpecker's beak! They seem labouring beneath some pathetic vow, exacted by the Demons of our Fate, under terrible threats, only to reveal what will serve their purpose! This applies as much to the Realists, with their traditional animal chemistry, as to the Idealists, with their traditional ethical dynamics. It applies, above all, to the interpreters of Sex, who, in their conventional grossness, as well as in their conventional discretion, bury such Ostrich heads in the sand!

There’s nothing more devious than one’s own self, because no one will believe it. And, I admit I had wanted to play the fool, because a fool is easier than one’s own self; but since a fool is an extreme, after all, and an extreme sparks curiosity, then I finally settled on my very own self.

Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it. Putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before. And although you are physically by yourself, the haunting Demon never leaves you, that Demon being the knowledge of your own terrible limitations, your hopeless inadequacy, the impossibility of ever getting it right. No matter how diamond-bright your ideas are dancing in your brain, on paper they are earthbound. If you’re trying a screenplay, you know it’s never going to be Bergman. If it’s a novel, well, what kind of a novelist can you hope to be when Dostoevski was there before you. And Dickens and Cervantes and all the other masters that led you to the prison of your desk. But if you’re a writer, that’s what you must do, and in order to accomplish anything at all, at the rock bottom of it all is your confidence. You tell yourself lies and you force them into belief: Hey, you suckers, I’m going to do it this one time. I’m going to tell you things you never knew. I’ve—got—secrets!

Everything is competing to show its good will. Things tend irresistibly towards perfection, effusiveness, reconciliation. Fortunately, nothing is ever perfect, thanks to Dostoevsky's 'unspeakable little demon ... that evil spirit that prompts to murder and scorn.' Everything tends irresistibly towards transparency. However, there remains a glimmer of secrecy - a clandestine dust-breeding that is mostly useless, an umbilical mirage, insider trading, but secret all the same.

Life is pain, life is fear, and man is unhappy. Now all is pain and fear. Now man loves life because he loves pain and fear. That’s how they’ve made it. Life now is given in exchange for pain and fear, and that is the whole deceit. Man now is not yet the right man. There will be a new man, happy and proud. He for whom it will make no difference whether he lives or does not live, he will be the new man. He who overcomes pain and fear will himself be God. And this God will not be.

My friend, I've told lies all my life. Even when I was speaking the truth. I never said anything for the sake of truth, but only for myself. I knew that before, but only now do I see it... Oh, where are those friends whom I have offended with my friendship my whole life? And it's all of them, all of them! Savez-vous, perhaps I'm lying even now; I'm probably lying even now. The main thing is that I believe myself when I lie. The hardest thing in life is to live and not lie... and... and not to believe your own lies, yes, yes, that's it precisely! But wait a moment, more of that later... We're together, together!' he added with enthusiasm.

And what you said to me about charity, for example? And yet the pleasure of charity is an arrogant and immoral pleasure, a rich man's pleasure in his riches, his power, and in the comparison of his significance with the significance of the beggar. Charity corrupts both him who gives and him who takes, and, moreover, does not achieve its goal, because it only increases beggary.

Nationalism, if you like, has never existed among us except as a distraction for gentlemen’s clubs, and Moscow ones at that. I’m not talking of the days of Igor, of course. And besides it all comes of idleness. Everything in Russia comes of idleness, everything good and fine even. It all springs from the charming, cultured, whimsical idleness of our gentry! I’m ready to repeat it for thirty thousand years. We don’t know how to live by our own labour. And as for the fuss they’re making now about the ‘dawn’ of some sort of public opinion, has it so suddenly dropped from heaven without any warning? How is it they don’t understand that before we can have an opinion of our own we must have work, our own work, our own initiative in things, our own experience. Nothing is to be gained for nothing. If we work we shall have an opinion of our own. But as we never shall work, our opinions will be formed for us by those who have hitherto done the work instead of us, that is, as always, Europe, the everlasting Germans—our teachers for the last two centuries.

The leaf is good. Everything is good.

Man is unhappy because he doesn’t know he’s happy;

I stopped the clock, it was twenty-three minutes to three.’ ‘As a symbol that time should stop?’ Kirillov said nothing.

Drop your tone and adopt a human one! For at least once in your life start speaking in a human voice.

Everyone has been falling for a long time, and everyone has known for a long time that there is nothing to grab on to.

For a Russian, honour is only an unnecessary burden. What’s more, it has always been a burden, for his entire history.

He proposes, as a final solution to the question, the division of mankind into two unequal parts. One-tenth is to receive personal freedom and unlimited rights over the remaining nine-tenths.6 The latter are to lose their individuality and turn into something like cattle, and with this unlimited obedience attain, through a series of regenerations, a primordial innocence, something like the primordial paradise, although they will have to work. The measures proposed by the author for depriving nine-tenths of mankind of their will and refashioning them into a herd by means of the re-education of entire generations are most remarkable, based on the data of nature, and very logical.

The first thing is to lower the level of education, science and accomplishment.1 A high level of science and accomplishment is accessible only to people of high ability, and there’s no need for high ability! People of high ability have always seized power and been despots. People of high ability can’t help but be despots and have always corrupted more than they have brought benefit; they are sent into exile or executed. Cicero had his tongue cut out, Copernicus had his eyes put out, Shakespeare2 was stoned — that’s Shigalyovism! Slaves should be equal; without despotism there has never yet been either freedom or equality, but there should be equality in the herd, and that’s Shigalyovism! Ha, ha, ha. Do you find that strange? I’m for Shigalyovism!

In troubled times, times of uncertainty or transition, various low types of people always and everywhere appear.

is only without beauty that we cannot continue, for there will be nothing at all to do in the world! That’s where the whole secret lies, that’s where the whole of history lies! Science itself would not last a minute without beauty — do you know about that, you who are laughing now? —it would turn into loutishness, you wouldn’t even be able to invent the nail!…

Sospeché de inmediato que, si usted me evitaba, era porque estaba casado y no porque me despreciase. Comprendí que era a mí, a una insensata como yo, a quien trataba de proteger con su huida. Ya ve como aprecio su generosidad. Me he quemado en una vela, nada más. Tampoco quiero ser la enfermera de un corazón herido

Gente alicorta, ¿qué más os hace falta para entender? ¿Es que no sabéis que la humanidad puede seguir viviendo sin los ingleses, sin Alemania y, por descontado, sin los rusos; que es posible vivir sin ciencia, vivir sin pan, pero en cambio es imposible vivir sin belleza, pues no habría nada que hacer en el mundo? ¡Ahí está todo el secreto, ahí está toda la historia. ¡Nos precipitaríamos en la barbarie...

But wasn’t it you who told me that if it were to be mathematically proven to you that the truth existed apart from Christ, then you would rather remain with Christ than with the truth?

This force is the force of an unquenchable desire to go on to the end, while at the same time denying the end.

The stronger a people, the more singular its God. There has never yet been a people without religion, that is, without the concept of evil and good.

In particular, this is the distinguishing feature of half-science, mankind’s most dreadful scourge, worse than plague, famine and war, and it has been unknown until the present century. Half-science is a despot such as has never been seen until now. A despot who has his high priests and his slaves, a despot before whom all have prostrated themselves with love and superstition such as has been unthinkable until now, before which even science itself trembles and to which it shamefully panders.

cutting off heads is the easiest thing of all, while to have an idea is the hardest of all!

When all of mankind achieves happiness, then there won’t be any more time, because it’s not necessary.

I thought at first that I would say nothing; but to say nothing, you know, is a great talent, and therefore unsuitable for me, and in the second place, it’s really rather dangerous to keep silent.

My friend, the real truth is always implausible, don’t you know that? In order to make the truth more plausible, you mustn’t fail to mix a lie in with it.

The result would be, in the first place, that you’ve convinced people of your simplemindedness, bored them to death and been incomprehensible — all three advantages simultaneously! I ask you, who’s going to suspect you of harbouring secret designs after that?

Time isn’t an object, but an idea.

if one were to commit an evil deed or, more important, a shameful act, that is, something disgraceful, but very base indeed and… absurd, so that people would remember it for a thousand years and hold it in contempt for a thousand years, and suddenly comes the thought: “A single blow in the temple, and after that, nothing”. Then what would I care about people and the fact that they’d hold me in contempt for a thousand years, isn’t that so?

Then history will be divided into two parts: from the gorilla to the annihilation of God, and from the annihilation of God to…’ ‘To the gorilla?

Bu bir alçaklık ve bütün yalan da burada, diye ba­ğırdı gözleri parlayarak. Yaşam acıdır. Yaşam korkudur ve in­san mutsuzdur. Bugün her şey acı ve korkudur. Bugün insan yaşamı seviyor çünkü acı ve korkuyu seviyor. Böyle gelmiş böyle gidiyor. Yaşam kendisini acı ve korku olarak gösteriyor. Yalan burada işte. Bugün insan, insan değil daha. Yeni bir insan ge­lecek. Mutlu ve gururlu. Onun için yaşamak veya yaşamamak aynı şey olacak. İşte yeni insan. Acı ve korkuyu yenen insanın kendisi Tanrı olacak. Öteki Tanrı olmayacak artık.

A great many ideas are coming to me now: you see, it’s just like our Russia. These demons who come out of the sick man and enter the swine — these are all the sores, all the contagions, all the uncleanness, all the demons, large and small, who have accumulated in our great and beloved sick man, our Russia, over the course of centuries, centuries! Oui, cette Russie, que j’aimais toujours. But she will be protected by a great idea and a great will from on high, just like that madman possessed by demons, and all these demons, all the uncleanness, all this filth that has festered on the surface… all this will beg to enter the swine. And perhaps they have already entered them! That’s us, us and them, and my son Petrusha… et les autres avec lui, and I perhaps am the first, standing at the very head; and we shall throw ourselves, the madmen and the possessed, from a rock into the sea and we shall all drown, and that’s no more than we deserve, because that’s precisely what we’re fit for.

We are unable to live by our own labor.

Here, in what many consider the darkest of his novels, Dostoevsky inscribes the fundamental freedom of Judeo-Christian revelation—the freedom to turn from evil, the freedom to repent. His vision is not Manichaean; he does not see evil as co-eternal with good. Evil cannot be the essence of any living person. The “possessed” can at any moment be rid of their demons, which are wicked but also false.

The assertion of human autonomy is finally a revolt against God; it is also the final lie, the mystification behind all the demystifying critiques of modern times. It was in this light that Dostoevsky saw not only the political movements of his day, but the ideas that nourished them—ideas that came a bit late to Russia, but developed there at an accelerated pace.

On the one hand, then, the demons of the title belong to the folkloric realm of spirits; they are devilish misleaders of men, tricksters, whose presence is deduced from the question: “We’ve lost our way, what shall we do?

It is the eschatological light of all the Gospel accounts of Christ’s miracles and healings, which are not supernatural or magical but prefigure the coming of the Kingdom of God. Luke’s account of the Gerasene demoniac is considerably longer than the passage Dostoevsky cites. His selection emphasizes two things: the self-destruction of the swine, and the healing of the man. This, highly abbreviated, is the plot of Demons.

the demons came out of the Russian man and entered into a herd of swine, i.e. into the Nechaevs … etc.

The “healing” of the sick man is, however, barely adumbrated in the novel; the intensity of the demonic paroxysm all but overshadows it; yet awakening does come in extremis to Stepan Trofimovich, whose end is the antithesis of Stavrogin’s, but equally exemplary

The demons, then, are ideas, that legion of isms that came to Russia from the West: idealism, rationalism, empiricism, materialism, utilitarianism, positivism, socialism, anarchism, nihilism, and, underlying them all, atheism. To which the Slavophils opposed their notions of the Russian earth, the Russian God, the Russian Christ, the “light from the East,” and so on.

It was not you who ate the idea, but the idea that ate you,” Pyotr Verkhovensky says to Kirillov

Ideas that deface or distort this “authoritative image of a human being” in a person are indeed acting like demons, and are them.

The image of the ideal human being or the image of Christ represents for him the resolution of ideological quests. This image or this highest voice must crown the world of voices, must organize and subdue it.

the ultimate artistic criterion for Dostoevsky: not fidelity to his own convictions and not fidelity to convictions themselves taken abstractly, but precisely a fidelity to the authoritative image of a human being.

He is a man blinded by his own lucidity, in René Girard’s terms. It is a lucidity produced by elimination; there is an absence at the center of his thought, a golfo mistico through which the demons enter, turning his idea into its opposite. And it is not just any idea, but the one dearest to us all—the idea of freedom.

The “seed of the idea of destruction” is the revolt against God; but that is over and done with, it is already forgotten, no one is concerned with it anymore. What follows is man’s replacement of God and the correction of His creation. This amounts to a declaration of the absurdity and meaninglessness of history, of historical reality as the unfolding of God’s will in time, but also as the lived life of mankind—that is, to a separation from the historical body of mankind. Reality itself, physical reality, begins to drain out of this radical “idea,” leaving only the drab abstraction of materialism.

Everything is inverted here: freedom ends in despotism, adoration turns to hatred, lucidity increases blindness, the first real act of the liberator of mankind—Nechaev or Verkhovensky—is the murder of his human brother. Seeking the greatest good, we do the greatest evil. The demons parody God’s world and invert its ends, playing for its loss. And the source of all these inversions, the primordial parody, is the replacement of the “authoritative image of a human being” by the would-be autonomous human will.

In each case, with each voice of this many-voiced composition, we have sought “natural” English equivalents for the richly unnatural languages of the original.

They got everything out of books, and even at the first rumor from our progressive corners in the capital were prepared to throw anything whatsoever out the window, provided they were advised to throw it out.

Don’t they understand that in order to acquire an opinion what is needed first of all is labor, one’s own labor, one’s own initiative and experience! Nothing can ever be acquired gratis. If we labor, we shall have our own opinion. And since we shall never labor, those who have been working for us all along will have the opinion instead—that is, Europe again, the Germans again, our teachers from two hundred years back. Besides, Russia is too great a misunderstanding for us to resolve ourselves, without the Germans and without labor. For twenty years now I’ve been ringing the alarm and calling to labor! I’ve given my life to this call, and—madman—I believed! Now I no longer believe, but I still ring and shall go on ringing to the end, to my grave; I shall pull on the rope until the bells ring for my funeral!

why is it that all these desperate socialists and communists are at the same time such incredible misers, acquirers, property-lovers, so much so that the more socialist a man is, the further he goes, the more he loves property … why is it?

Stepan Trofimovich’s view of the general movement was scornful in the highest degree; with him it all came down to his being forgotten and not needed by anyone.

My friend, I’ve been telling lies all my life. Even when I told the truth I never spoke for the sake of the truth, but always for my own sake. I knew it before, but I only see it now.… Oh, where are those friends whom I have insulted with my friendship all my life? And all, all! Savez-vous … perhaps I am telling lies now; no doubt I am telling lies now. The worst of it is that I believe myself when I am lying. The hardest thing in life is to live without telling lies … and without believing in one’s lies. Yes, yes, that’s just it.… But wait a bit, that can all come afterwards.… We’ll be together, together,” he added enthusiastically.

Pierre, mon enfant, and I didn’t recognize you!” He embraced him tightly, and tears poured from his eyes.

But I haven’t seen you for ten years!” “The less reason for any outpourings …” “Mon enfant!

but shared isolation is sometimes extremely damaging to true friendship.

since one always finds more monks than reason

Now it is being suggested to us, through various strewn-about leaflets of foreign manufacture, that we close ranks and start groups with the sole purpose of universal destruction, under the pretext that however you try to cure the world, you’re not going to cure it, but by radically lopping off a hundred million heads,

You at least are not angry with me?” Stavrogin gave him his hand. “Not at all!” Kirillov turned back to shake hands with him. “If the burden is light for me because of my nature, then maybe the burden is heavier for you because of your nature. Nothing to be much ashamed of, only a little.

You shouldn’t have offended him.” “And what should I have done?” “You should have killed him.” “You’re sorry I didn’t kill him?” “I’m not sorry about anything. I thought you really wanted to kill him. You don’t know what you’re seeking.” “I’m seeking a burden,” laughed Stavrogin.

There was perhaps more anger in Nikolai Vsevolodovich than in those two together, but this anger was cold, calm, and, if one may put it so, reasonable, and therefore the most repulsive and terrible that can be.

If you found out that you believe in God, you would believe; but since you don’t know yet that you believe in God, you don’t believe

He’s got each member of society watching the others and obliged to inform. Each belongs to all, and all to each. They’re all slaves and equal in their slavery. Slander and murder in extreme cases, but above all—equality. First, the level of education, science, and talents is lowered. A high level of science and talents is accessible only to higher abilities—no need for higher abilities! Higher abilities have always seized power and become despots. Higher abilities cannot fail to be despots and have always corrupted rather than been of use; they are to be banished or executed. Cicero’s tongue is cut off, Copernicus’s eyes are put out, Shakespeare is stoned—this is Shigalyovism! Slaves must be equal: there has never yet been either freedom or equality without despotism, but within a herd there must be equality, and this is Shigalyovism!

Only one thing is lacking in the world: obedience. The thirst for education is already an aristocratic thirst. As soon as there’s just a tiny bit of family or love, there’s a desire for property. We’ll extinguish desire: we’ll get drinking, gossip, denunciation going; we’ll get unheard-of depravity going; we’ll stifle every genius in infancy. Everything reduced to a common denominator, complete equality.

But one or two generations of depravity are necessary now, an unheard-of, mean little depravity, that turns men into vile, cowardly, cruel, self-loving slime—that’s what’s needed!

And yet the trashiest people suddenly gained predominance and began loudly criticizing all that’s holy, whereas earlier they had not dared to open their mouths, and the foremost people, who until then had so happily kept the upper hand, suddenly began listening to them, and became silent themselves; and some even chuckled along in a most disgraceful way.

Our most solid minds are now marveling at themselves: how could they suddenly have gone so amiss then?

it’s very easy for Pyotr Stepanovich to live in the world, because he imagines a man and then lives with him the way he imagined him.

His selection emphasizes two things: the self-destruction of the swine, and the healing of the man. This, highly abbreviated, is the plot of Demons.

Stavrogin is everything.

It was not you who ate the idea, but the idea that ate you,

Finally, the scene changes again, and a wild place appears, where a civilized young man wanders among the rocks picking and sucking at some wild herbs, and when a fairy asks him why he is sucking these herbs, he responds that he feels an overabundance of life in himself, is seeking oblivion, and finds it in the juice of these herbs, but that his greatest desire is to lose his reason as quickly as possible (a perhaps superfluous desire).

More significantly, it was under Belinsky’s tutelage that Dostoevsky had gone from a lingering social Christianity to atheist materialism. “I have acquired the truth,” he wrote to Herzen in 1845, “and in the words God and religion I see darkness, obscurity, chains, and the knout.” This negative conversion out of love for suffering humanity was not an ideological affectation for Dostoevsky, it was the central crisis of his life and would inform all his later work.

There will be entire freedom when it makes no difference whether one lives or does not live. That is the goal to everything.” “The goal? But then perhaps no one will even want to live?” “No one,” he said resolutely.

If there is God, then the will is all his, and I cannot get out of his will. If not, the will is all mine, and it is my duty to proclaim self-will.

It is my duty to shoot myself because the fullest point of my self-will is—for me to kill myself.

To kill someone else would be the lowest point of my self-will, and there’s the whole of you in that. I am not you: I want the highest point, and will kill myself.

It is my duty to proclaim unbelief,” Kirillov was pacing the room. “For me no idea is higher than that there is no God. The history of mankind is on my side. Man has done nothing but invent God, so as to live without killing himself; in that lies the whole of world history up to now. I alone for the first time in world history did not want to invent God. Let them know once and for all.

Listen: this man was the highest on all the earth, he constituted what it was to live for. Without this man the whole planet with everything on it is—madness only. There has not been one like Him before or since, not ever, even to the point of miracle. This is the miracle, that there has not been and never will be such a one. And if so, if the laws of nature did not pity even This One, did not pity even their own miracle, but made Him, too, live amidst a lie and die for a lie, then the whole planet is a lie, and stands upon a lie and a stupid mockery. Then the very laws of the planet are a lie and a devil’s vaudeville. Why live then, answer me, if you’re a man.

and I am unhappy, because it is my duty to proclaim self-will. Everyone is unhappy, because everyone is afraid to proclaim self-will. That is why man has been so unhappy and poor up to now, because he was afraid to proclaim the chief point of self-will and was self-willed only on the margins, like a schoolboy. I am terribly unhappy, because I am terribly afraid. Fear is man’s curse … But I will proclaim self-will, it is my duty to believe that I do not believe. I will begin, and end, and open the door. And save. Only this one thing will save all men and in the next generation transform them physically; for in the present physical aspect, so far as I have thought, it is in no way possible for man to be without the former God. For three years I have been searching for the attribute of my divinity, and I have found it: the attribute of my divinity is—Self-will!

I kill myself to show my insubordination and my new fearsome freedom.

The whole law of human existence consists in nothing other than a man’s always being able to bow before the immeasurably great. If people are deprived of the immeasurably great, they will not live and will die in despair. The immeasurable and infinite is as necessary for man as the small planet he inhabits … My friends, all, all of you: long live the Great Thought! The eternal, immeasurable Thought! For every man, whoever he is, it is necessary to bow before that which is the Great Thought. Even the stupidest man needs at least something great.

My desires are far too weak; they cannot guide.

I also know that it was not you who ate the idea, but the idea that ate you, and so you won’t put it off.