The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky

'I think everyone must love life more than anything else in the world.'
'Love life more than the meaning of it?'
'Yes, certainly. Love it regardless of logic, as you say. Yes, most certainly regardless of logic, for only then will I grasp its meaning. That's what I've been vaguely aware of for a long time. Half your work is done, Ivan: you love life. Now you must try to do the second half and you are saved.'

The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point 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.

I love mankind, but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.

I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, 'I exist.' In thousands of agonies — I exist. I'm tormented on the rack — but I exist! Though I sit alone in a pillar — I exist! I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.