“Beauty! I can't bear the thought that man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom. What's still more awful is that man with the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal of the Madonna, and his heart may be on fire with the ideal, genuinely on fire, just as in his days of youth and innocence.”
More from Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“I want to get to know you once for all, and I want you to know me. And then say good-bye.…”
“I am too young and I’ve loved you too much.”
“Yet in their absence I seemed to love them so much.”
“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”