Fyodor Dostoevsky

A Funny Man's Dream

Ilse

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I am a ridiculous person. Now they call me a madman. That would be a promotion if it were not that I remain as ridiculous in their eyes as before.

I suddenly felt that it was all the same to me whether the world existed or whether there had never been anything at all: I began to feel with all my being that there was nothing existing. 

But I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.

I was vexed at the reflection that if I were going to make an end of myself that night, nothing in life ought to have mattered to me.

At last these people grew weary of their meaningless toil, and signs of suffering came into their faces, and then they proclaimed that suffering was a beauty, for in suffering alone was there meaning.

 But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?

On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering. We cannot love otherwise, and we know of no other sort of love. I want suffering in order to love.

The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that's the chief thing, and that's everything; nothing else is wanted--you will find out at once how to arrange it all. And yet it's an old truth which has been told and retold a billion times-- but it has not formed part of our lives! The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness--that is what one must contend against.

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