Crime and Punishment

The novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are drawn in, whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a giddy rapture. Outside of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading. Viriginia Woolf The Russian Point of View

Kathe Kollwitz - The Weavers: Poverty

The means never justify the ends because love lives only in the present.

Who is this God? An idea that has forced itself upon mankind in all parts of the earth and in all ages and always in similar form: an otherworldly power which has us at its mercy, which begets and kills - an image of all the necesseties and inevitableness of life. Since, psychologically speaking, the God-image is a complex of ideas of an archetypal nature, it must necessarily be regarded as representing a certain sum of energy (libido) which appears in projection. C.J. Jung Symbols and Transformation Paragraph 89

I have been told to reason by the heart, But heart, like head, leads helplessly; I have been told to reason by the pulse, And, when it quickens, alter the actions' pace Till field and roof lie level and the same So fast I move defying time, the quiet gentleman Whose beard wags in Egyptian wind. Should Lanterns Shine Dylan Thomas

And this is the simple truth - that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce. Soren Kierkegaard

How dreadfully has it tormented me (and torments me even now) this longing for faith, which is all the stronger for the proofs I have against it. And yet God gives me sometimes moments of perfect peace; in such moments I love and believe that I am loved; in such moments I have formulated my creed, wherein all is clear and holy to me. Fyodor Dostoyevsky Letter to Mme. N. D. Fonvisin

Faith: not wanting to know what the truth is. Friedrich Nietzsche