taken from the following passage in the third chapter of the third part of the first book of fyodor dostoevsky's 1879 novel 'the brothers karamazov:

[...] I am that insect, brother, and it is said of me specially. All we Karamazovs are such insects, and, angel as you are, that insect lives in you, too, and will stir up a tempest in your blood. Tempests, because sensual lust is a tempest worse than a tempest! Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side. I am a cultivated man, brother, but I've thought a lot about this. It's terrible what mysteries there are! Too many riddles weigh men down on earth. We must solve them as we can, and try to keep a dry skin in the water. Beauty! I can't endure the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom. What's still more awful is that a man with the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal of the Madonna, and his heart may be on fire with that ideal, genuinely on fire, just as in his days of youth and innocence. Yes, man is broad, too broad, indeed. I'd have him narrower. The devil only knows what to make of it! What to the mind is shameful is beauty and nothing else to the heart. Is there 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.[...]

Dmitri, the oldest Karamazov son and the only son who grows up with the expectation of coming into property, can be considered this novel's pivotal figure. The novel revolves around his guilt in connection with the murder of Fyodor Karamazov, and Dmitri is the person who undergoes the most significant change during the course of the novel. Dmitri does not have the intellectual pretensions of Ivan and cannot understand his brother's metaphysical concerns, nor is Dmitri as spiritual as his brother Alyosha, although he basically accepts God and immortality. He is, in fact, best represented as being caught midway between a sort of “Madonna-Sodom' opposition; he fluctuates between two poles of existence. Coursing through him are impulses for honor and nobility, side by side with impulses toward the low and the animal. This duality is partly explained by Dostoevsky's belief that the typical Russian is able to love God even while he sins. a particularly crucial scene, and one that shows Dmitri's contradictory personality, is his manipulation of events in order to force Katerina to come to his room so that he can seduce her. When she arrives, Dmitri cannot carry out his scheme. The better part of his nature has gained control of him. compounding Dmitri's confusion is his realization of being raked by these polar extremes. therefore He says that "beauty is a terrible and awful thing", meaning that a beautiful woman can arouse sensual desires, yet can also, at the same time, inspire noble and elevated thoughts. He is the victim of opposite extremes of passion yet cannot comprehend their origin, their dimensions, or their purpose.a part of the cited passage was used by yukio mishima (see as long as you know i am waiting, take your time f...) as prologue to his 1948 novel confessions of a mask. this passage does have similar themes to she is suffering - beauty and desire conflicting with intellect and causing internal chaos, inspired by the idea that all religions claim that you can only live in peace when you ban your lusts and desires. [MANY THANKS TO THE DRAINPIPE ON OUR FORUM FOR PROVIDING THIS INFORMATION].