Quotes from Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

How can one deceive these dear little birds, when they look at one so sweetly and confidingly? I call them birds because there is nothing in the world better than birds!

We degrade God too much, ascribing to him our ideas, in vexation at being unable to understand Him.

Don't let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.

God has such gladness every time he sees from heaven that a sinner is praying to Him with all his heart, as a mother has when she sees the first smile on her baby's face.

The prince says that the world will be saved by beauty! And I maintain that the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love.