David Bai

“Self-pity” is just sadness, I think, in the pejorative.”
― Renata Adler, Speedboat

“And indeed, here I am posing an idle question of my own now: which is better - cheap happiness or sublime suffering?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Though I do not believe in the order of things, still the sticky little leaves that come out in the spring are dear to me, the blue sky is dear to me, some people are dear to me, whom one loves sometimes, would you believe it, without even knowing why; some human deeds are dear to me, which one has perhaps long ceased believing in, but still honors with one's heart, out of old habit..."
--Ivan Karamazov”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“But man seeks to bow before that only which is recognized by the greater majority, if not by all his fellowmen, as having a right to be worshipped; whose rights are so unquestionable that men agree unanimously to bow down to it. For the chief concern of these miserable creatures is not to find and worship the idol of their own choice, but to discover that which all others will believe in, and consent to bow down to in a mass. It is that instinctive need of having a worship in common that is the chief suffering of every man, the chief concern of mankind from the beginning of times. It is for that universality of religious worship that people destroyed each other by sword. Creating gods unto themselves, they forthwith began appealing to each other: “Abandon your deities, come and bow down to ours, or death to ye and your idols!” And so will they do till the end of this world; they will do so even then, when all the gods themselves have disappeared, for then men will prostrate themselves before and worship some idea.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov