The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.
Fyodor Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov, Book II, Chapter IV (1880) Translated by Constance Garnett
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When and why it was written
- When
- From The Brothers Karamazov, 1880.
- Why
- Zossima recalls a doctor who confessed this about himself.
What it means
Dostoevsky names a familiar trap: loving people in the abstract while finding actual people hard to bear.
The cure Zossima offers is active love, practised on the people in front of you.
Our reading of the passage cited above, not a quotation from a commentary.
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The Brothers Karamazov, 1880
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