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
If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God have pity upon you. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and cleanse not only your own sins but the sins of others.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Love is a transformative power that atones for sins and connects us to the divine.
In this quote, Dostoevsky emphasizes the profound nature of love as a divine force that leads to redemption and spiritual connection. He suggests that genuine love is capable of not only cleansing the individual of their own sins but also extending its grace to others, illustrating how love serves as a bridge to understanding and compassion, ultimately aligning us with the divine. The act of being penitent, or sorrowful for one’s sins, is intertwined with the capacity to love, reinforcing the idea that love is fundamental to the nature of God and to our relationships with one another.
Themes
LoveRedemptionGodCompassionForgiveness
In practice
Example use cases
In a sermon discussing the importance of love in our spiritual lives.
More from Fyodor Dostoevsky
All quotes →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.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
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.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
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!
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
...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.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Similar quotes
We're not called to be a tolerant nation. We're called to be a nation of love.
Cory BookerRead
Love contending with friendship, and self with each generous impulse._x000D_ _x000D_ To and fro in his breast his thoughts were heaving and dashing,_x000D_ _x000D_ As in a foundering ship.
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowRead
I spent your Wish on that doucheface,” I said into his chest. “Hazel Grace. No. I will grant you that you did spend my one and only Wish, but you did not spend it on him. You spent it on us.
John GreenRead
They will say I smoked cigarettes and marijuana, cursed hoarse as a crow in all my languages, and loved morphine and Demerol and tequila and pulque, women and men. I will shrug my illusion of shoulders and answer that I am a water woman, not a vessel, not something you can sail or charter. I am instead the tributary, the river, the fluid source, and the sea itself. I am all her rainy implications. And what do you, with your rusted compass, know of love?
Kate BravermanRead
Wherever you are you will always be in my heart.
Mahatma GandhiRead
All she wanted was to be a little girl, to be efficiently taken care of by some yielding yet superior power, stupider and steadier than herself. It seemed that the only lover she had ever wanted was a lover in a dream
F. Scott FitzgeraldRead