Myshkin: … our people don’t simply become atheists, but they must believe in atheism, as in a new faith, without ever noticing that they’re believing in a zero.

… suddenly, amidst the sadness, the darkness of soul the pressure, his brain would momentarily catch fire, as it were, all his life’s forces would be strained at once in an extraordinary impulse. The sense of life, of self-awareness, increased nearly tenfold in these moments, which flashed by like lightning. His mind, his heart were lit up with an extraordinary light; all his agitation, all his doubts, all his worries were as if placated at once, resolved in a sort of sublime tranquility, filled with serene, harmonious joy, and hope, filled with reason and ultimate cause.

At that moment I was somehow able to understand the extraordinary phrase that time shall be no more.

… dullness, darkness of soul, idiocy stood before him as the clear consequence of these ‘highest’ moments.

Yes, for this moment one could give one’s whole life!

My gestures are inappropriate, I have no sense of measure; my words are wrong, they don’t correspond to my thoughts, and that is humiliating for the thoughts.

It’s all philosophy. You’re a philosopher and have come to teach us.

Such beauty has power. You can overturn the world with such beauty.

The point is in life, in life alone – in discovering it, constantly and eternally, and not at all in the discovery itself!

Why did I actually begin to live, knowing that it was no longer possible for me to begin; why did I try, knowing that it was no longer anything for me to try.

My dreams will change and perhaps become lighter.

stray lines from Dostoevsky's The Idiot