Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery. If there is a hundredth of a fraction of a false note to candor, it immediately produces dissonance, and as a result, exposure. But in flattery, even if everything is false down to the last note, it is still pleasant, and people will listen not without pleasure; with coarse pleasure, perhaps, but pleasure nevertheless.
Interpretation
Candor is far more challenging than flattery, which is often easier and more enjoyable to accept.
In this quote, Dostoevsky reflects on the intrinsic difficulties of honesty and the allure of flattery. He suggests that while true candor demands authenticity and can lead to discomfort or exposure when even slightly off-key, flattery, regardless of its insincerity, is readily accepted and enjoyed by people, revealing a preference for comfort over truth in human interactions.
In practice
During a motivational speech about the importance of honesty in leadership.
Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.
What if, when this fog scatters and flies upward, the whole rotten, slimey city goes with it, rises with the fog and vanishes like smoke.
Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled.
Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.
But do you understand, I cry to him, do you understand that if you have the guillotine in the forefront, and with such glee, it's for the sole reason that cutting heads off is the easiest thing, and having an idea is difficult!
...to return to their 'native soil,' as they say, to the bosom, so to speak, of their mother earth, like frightened children, yearning to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their decrepit mother, and to sleep there for ever, only to escape the horrors that terrify them.
To find a cause that's larger than yourself and then to give your life to it.
The government's not going to create jobs. It doesn't have to. People have to create jobs.
Any mental activity is easy if it need not be subjected to reality.
The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one's people that has not previously been taken into account.
What difference does it make, after all, what your position in life is if you dislike it yourself?
God comes into the very midst of evil and of death, and judges the evil in us and in the world. And by judging us, he cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with his grace and love. He makes us happy as only children can be happy.
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