It wasn't the New World that mattered ... Columbus died almost without seeing it; and not really knowing what he had discovered. It's life that matters, nothing but life - the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all. But what's the use of talking! I suspect that all I'm saying now is so like the usual commonplaces that I shall certainly be taken for a lower-form schoolboy sending in his essay on 'sunrise', or they'll say perhaps that I had something to say, but that I did not know how to 'explain' it. But I'll add, that there is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps the most important of your ideas. But if I too have failed to convey all that has been tormenting me for the last six months, it will, anyway, be understood that I have paid very dearly for attaining my present 'last conviction.' This is what I felt necessary, for certain objects of my own, to put forward in my 'Explanation'. However, I will continue.
More from Fyodor Dostoevsky
Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it - that is what you must do.
Permalink to quote #25 Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active…
Permalink to quote #27 Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.
Permalink to quote #24