Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot, quotes

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

'it's life that matters, nothing but life — the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.'

'Do you know, to my thinking it's a good thing sometimes to be absurd; it's better in fact, it makes it easier to forgive one another, it's easier to be humble. One can't understand everything at once, we can't begin with perfection all at once! In order to reach perfection one must begin by being ignorant of a great deal. And if we understand things too quickly, perhaps we shan't understand them thoroughly'

'beauty is a riddle'