As you can see, f(S) acts as a multiplier on pleasure, so the amount of time you’ve spent in suffering affects how much happiness you get out of your time spent in pleasure. I didn’t want to assume too much about that function, but I think it’s reasonable to say the following:

I believe in Christ and confess him not like some child; my hosanna has passed through an enormous furnace of doubt. Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery. If there’s the hundredth part of a false note in speaking the truth, it leads to a discord, and that leads to trouble. But if all, to the last note, is false in flattery, it is just as agreeable, and is heard not without satisfaction. It may be a coarse satisfaction, but still a satisfaction. And however coarse the flattery, at least half will be sure to seem true. That’s so for all stages of development and classes of society. I didn't enjoy this book as much as I expected to - but it's still a very good one, aside from some hiccups. Though attributed to Dostoevsky on social media, there is no record of him making such a statement. I’m fairly certain that the Wall Street Journal review that led me to this book used the word ‘nihilist’ to describe the author. That was an unfortunate use of the word. The author of this book is smart enough to not outsource his meaning to any book or unfounded authority or belief in fairy tales that aren’t supported by reason or rational thought. The author refutes the myth of Sisyphus and Camus’ only question of philosophy ‘should we kill ourselves’. That author points out that Camus does muddle the response, but the author knows that our meaning must lie within ourselves not outside of us. The real ‘absurdity’ that Camus alludes to is that we all know that we will die one day with certainty but we all act as if we won’t.Last Notebook (1880–1881), Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 83: 696; as quoted in Kenneth Lantz, The Dostoevsky Encyclopedia (2004), p. 21, hdn ISBN 0-313-30384-3 Variant translation: I am a ridiculous man. They call me a madman now. That would be a distinct rise in my social position were it not that they still regard me as being as ridiculous as ever. But that does not make me angry any more. They are all dear to me now even while they laugh at me — yes, even then they are for some reason particularly dear to me. I shouldn't have minded laughing with them — not at myself, of course, but because I love them — had I not felt so sad as I looked at them. I feel sad because they do not know the truth, whereas I know it. Oh, how hard it is to be the only man to know the truth! But they won't understand that. No, they will not understand. Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles. Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea. And there is only one higher idea on earth, and it is the idea of the immortality of the human soul, for all other "higher" ideas of life by which humans might live derive from that idea alone. When life gives you hard time .. and problems .. Don't worry just look at the bright side that's what i understood from it .

The Brothers Karamazov is the most magnificent novel ever written; the episode of the Grand Inquisitor, one of the peaks in the literature of the world, can hardly be valued too highly. Personal correspondence (1839), as quoted in Dostoevsky: His Life and Work (1971) by Konstantin Mochulski, as translated by Michael A. Minihan, p. 17 This is a wonderful, strange, and genre-defying book... [ The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars] powerfully evokes the beauty and absurdity, the sadness and the mystery, the beating pulse of life." The Darker the Night, The Brighter the Stars weaves a scientist’s understanding of the mind – its logic, its nuance, how we think about what makes a person – with a poet’s approach to humanity, that crucial and ever-elusive why. It’s a story that unfolds through the centuries, along the path of humankind’s constant quest to discover what makes us human, and the answers that consistently slip out of our grasp. It’s modern medicine and psychology and ancient tales; history and myth combined; fiction and the stranger truth. In PART TWO: A THOUSAND RED BUTTERFLIES, Broks delves more into his trade, musing much on the nature of consciousness between scientific research and theory and philosophical explorations. I kept having to set the book aside and digest his thoughts. One section prompted a mental WTH? and given that in his prologue he said that facts sit alongside fiction and that he thought the fictional elements were easily identified, I'm not sure if he was serious that not all humans are sentient - at least, that's what a colleague discovered in that particular story (although...there was considerable evidence of such in 2016 and since, but that would make his 10% far too low...) I won't spoil where the title of this second part comes from...you'll have to find that out yourself. I admit that I was, because I am by nature, less enamored of the philosophy elements, but the stories are still good anyway.

Notes from Underground (1864) [ edit ] The characteristics of our romantics are to understand everything, to see everything and to see it often incomparably more clearly than our most realistic minds see it... Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others.

And now once again I asked myself the question: do I love her? And once more I could not answer, that is to say, again, for the hundreth time, I answered that I hated her. Letter To Mme. N. D. Fonvisin (1854), as published in Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to his Family and Friends (1914), translated by Ethel Golburn Mayne, Letter XXI, p. 71 He comes silently and unannounced; yet all--how strange--yea, all recognize Him, at once! ...The Sun of Love burns in His heart, and warm rays of Light, Wisdom and Power beam forth from His eyes, and pour down their waves upon the swarming multitudes of the rabble assembled around, making their hearts vibrate with returning love. Everything was given over by Thee to the Pope, and everything now rests with him alone; Thou hast no business to return and thus hinder us in our work.Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve? So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship. But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship they've slain each other with the sword. They have set up gods and challenged one another, ‘Put away your gods and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!’ And so it will be to the end of the world, even when gods disappear from the earth; they will fall down before idols just the same. And since we’ve worked out that f(S) = aS + 1, we know that f'(S) = a, and we can plug both of those expressions into the equation above:

I go to spread the tidings, I want to spread the tidings — of what? Of the truth, for I have seen it, have seen it with my own eyes, have seen it in all its glory. There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God? It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.

Part I, Book I: A Nice Little Family, Ch. 2: The Old Buffoon; as translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, p. 44 First of all, this prince is an idiot, and, secondly, he is a fool--knows nothing of the world, and has no place in it.