The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.
 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1880). copy citation

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Author Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Source The Brothers Karamazov
Topic fight beauty heart
Date 1880
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by Constance Garnett
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28054/28054-h/28054-h.html

Context

“What to the mind is shameful is beauty and nothing else to the heart. Is there [pg 115] beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in Sodom. Did you know that secret? The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man. But a man always talks of his own ache. Listen, now to come to facts.»
CHAPTER IV. The Confession Of A Passionate Heart—In Anecdote
«I was leading a wild life then. Father said just now that I spent several thousand roubles in seducing young girls.” source

Meaning and analysis

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