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Written by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Book 1: History of a Family
Quotes
Adelaida Ivanona Miusov's action was similarly, no doubt, an echo of
other people's ideas, and was due to the irritation caused by lack of
mental freedom. She wanted, perhaps, to show her feminine
independence, to override class distinctions and the despotism of her
family
…of this old woman, who was apparently not bad-hearted but had
become an unsufferable tyrant through idleness.
So, up to now, the family is Fyodor, Adelaida, and Mitya. Fyodor forgot
Mitya, Adelaida died in the garret in one version, or of starvation in
another. Anyways, Gregory took care of Mitya.
Peter was impressed by the erudite Ivan who has just published a
satirical burlesque article on the Ecclesiastical courts.
Chapter 5
"…but I fancy that Alyosha was more of a realist than anyone. Oh! no
doubt, in the monastery he fully believed in miracles, but to my
thinking, miracles ar never a stumbling-block to the realist. It is not
miracles that dispose realists to belief.
I want to live for immortality, and I will accept no compromise.
"What was such an elder? AN elder was one who took your soul, our will,
into his soul and his will. When you choose an elder, you renounce your
own will and yield it to him in complete submission, complete
self-abnegation. This novitiate, this terrible school of abnegation, is
undertaken voluntarily, in the hope of self-conquest, of self-mastery,
in order, after a life of obediance, to attain perfect freedom, that is,
from self; to escape the lot of those who have lived their whole life
without finding their true selves in themslves."
Book II: An Unfortunate Gathering
Chapter 1
Now, I know myself, I am annoyed, I shall lose my temper and begin to
quarrel-and lower myself and my ideas.
Chapter 2
There was also a tall young man, who looked about two and twenty,
standing in the corner throughout the interview. He had a broad, fresh
face, and clever, observant, narrow brown eyes, and was wearing ordinary
dress. He was a divinity student, living under the protection of the
monastery. His expression was one of unquestioning, but self-respecting,
reverence. Being in a subordinate and dependent position, and so not
on an equality with the guests, he did not gree them with a bow.
Miusov took a cursory glance at all these 'conventional' surroundings
and bent an intent look upon the elder. He had a high opinion of his own
insight, a weakness excusable in him as he was fifty, an age at which
a clever man of the world of established position can hardly help taking
himself rather seriously.
Do not trouble. Make yourself quite at home. And, above all, do not be
so ashamed of yourself, for that is at the root of it all
don't give way to sensual lust; and, above all, to the love of money.
And close your taverns. If you can't close all, at least two or three.
And, above all-don't lie.
…Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and
listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish
the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for
himself and for others.
And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and
distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse
pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual
lying to other men and to himself.#+beginquote
I do not know what saint. I do not know and can't tell. I was deceived.
I was told story. I had heard it, and do you know who told it.#+beginquote
..and that it is a terrible illness to which women are subject,
especially prevalent among us in Russia, and that it is due to the harrd
lot of the peasant women. It is a disease, I was told, arising from
exhausting toil too soon after hard, abnormal, and unassisted labour in
childbirth, and from the hopeless misery, from beatings, and so on,
which some women were not able to endure like others.
which had been explained to me as due to the malingering and the
trickery of the clericals, aros probably in the most natural manner.#+beginquote
Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more. It feeds
on the sense of its hopelessness. **Lamentations spring only from the
constant craving to re-open the wound**#+beginquote
Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of
God."
#+beginquote
or men re made for happiness, and anyone who is completely happy has a
right to say to himself, I am doing God's will on earth. All the
righteous all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.
But, I only believed when I was a little child, mechanically, without
thinking of anything
"if you have been talking to me so sincerely, simply to gain approbation
for your frankness, as you did from me just now, then, of course, you
will not attain to anything in the achievemnt of real love; it willl
all get no further than dreams and your whole life will slip away like a
phantom.
Don't be frightened overmuch even at your evil actions**. I am sorry
I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh
and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.#+beginquote
…and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all
the time loving and mysteriously guiding you."
Chapter 5
You must admit that. Consequently, the security of society is not
preserved for, although the obnoxious member is mechanically cut off and
sent far away out of sight, another criminal always comes to take his
place at once and often two of them. If anything odes preserve society
even in our time, and does regenerate and transform the criminal, it
is only the law of Christ speaking in his conscience. It is only by
recognizing his wrongdoing as a son of a Christian society.
So that it is only against the Church, and not against the State, that
the criminal of to-day can recognize that he has sinned. If society,
as a Church, had jurisdiction, then it would know when to bring back
from exclusion and to reunite to itself
Now the Church having no real jurisdiction, ut only the power of moral
condemnation, withdraws of her own accord from punishing the criminal
actively. She does not excommunicate him but simply persists in
motherly exhortation
"The subject was the scoialist revolutionaries who where at that time
persecuted. I will quote only one most curious remark ropped by this
person. 'We are not particularly fraid.' said he, 'of all these
socialists, anarchists, infidels, and revolutionists; we keep watch on
them and know all their goings on. But there are a few peculiar men
among them who believe in God and are Christians, but at the same time
are scoialists. These are the people we are most afraid of.' They
are dreadful peple! The socialist who is a CHristian is more ot be
dreaded than a socialist who is an atheist.' The words struck me at the
time, and now they have suddenly back to me here, gentlemen'"
Chapter 6
'I'm extremely obliged to you, and expected no less from your goodness Saying
this, Dimitri bowed once more."
The sense of respect is evocative.
…he solemnly declared in argument that thre was nothing in the whole
world to make men love their neighbours. That there was no law of nature
that man should love mankind, and that, if there had been any love on
earth hitherto, it was not owing to a natural law, but simply because
men have believed in immportality.
Similar to having a repeated setting in a zero-sum game. The invovled
players have to eventually cooperate.
Ivan the continues
…added in parenthesis that the whole natural law lies in that fairth,
and that if you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality,
not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world
would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral,
everything would be lawful, even caannibalism. That's not all. He ended
by asserting that for every individual like ourselves, who does not
believe in God or immortality, the moral law of nature must immediately
be changed into the exact contrary of the former religious law, and that
egoism, even to crime, must become not only lawful but even recognized
as the inevitable, the most rational, even honourable outcome of his
position.
Chapter 7
…He longed, moreover, to ask the significance of his bowing to
Dmitri, the question was on the tip of his tongue, but he dared not ask
it. He knew that the elder would have explained it unasked if he had
thought fit. But evidently it was not his will
Learning to trust in the perspicacity of the older people.
"A man will fall in love with some beauty, with a woman's body, or
even with a part of a woman's body ( a sensualist can understand
that), and he'll abandon his own children for her, sell his father and
mother, and his country, Russia, too. If he's honest, he'll steal; if
he's humane, he'll murder; if he's faithful, he'll deceive"
Similar to what was said in Early Corrupted Young
"Those are the most fatal people! Who the devil can make you out? He
recognises his vileness and goes on with it!"
Chapter 8
"It was said of old, 'Many have begun to speak against me and have
uttered evil sayings about me. And hearing it I have said to myself: it
is the correction of the Lord and He has sent it to heal my vain soul'
And so we humbly thank you, honoured guest!"
Book III: The Sensualists
Chapter 1: In the Servant's Quarters
Grigory knew too, that he had an indisputable influence over his master. It was
true, and he was aware of it. Fyodor Pavlovitch was an obstinate and cunning
buffoon, yet, though his will was strong enough in some of the affairs of life
Marva Ignatyevna was by no means foolish; she was probably, cleverer than her
husband, or, at least, more prudent than he in worldly affairs, and yet she
had given in to him in everything without question or complaint ever since her
marriage, and respected him for his spiritual superiority. It was remarkable
how little they spoke to one another in the course of their lives, and only of
the most necessary daily lives. The grave and dignified Grigory thought over all
his cares and duties alone, so that Marfa Ignatyevna had long grown used to
knowing that he did not need her advice. She felt that her husband respected
her silence, and took it as a sign of her good sense.
Chapter 3: The Confession of a Passionate Heart in Verse
It was not her beauty which troubled him, but something else. And the vagueness
of his apprehension increased the apprehension itself.
You may be in love with a woman and yet hate her.
You are an angel on earth. You will hear and judge and forgive. And that's what
I need, that someone above me should forgive.
I pray God I'm not lying and showing off.
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.
Chapter 4: The Confession of a Passionate Heart–in Anecdote
"You say that because I blushed," Alyosha said suddenly. "I wasn't blushing at
what you were saying or at what you've done. I blushed because I am the same as
you are".
"You? Come, that's going a little too far!"
"No, it's not too far," said Alyosha warmly (obviously the idea was not a new
one). "The ladder's the same. I'm at the bottom step, and you're above,
somewhere about the thirteenth. That's how I see it. But it's all the same.
Absolutely the same kind. Anyone on the bottom step is bound to go up to the top
one." "Then one ought not to step on at all."
What made it worse was that I felt that 'Katenka' was not an innocent
boarding-school miss, but a person of character, proud and really
high-principled; above all, she had education and intellect, and I had neither.
You think I meant to make her an offer? No, I simply wanted to revenge myself,
because I was such a hero and she didn't seem to feel it.
Pro and Contra
The Brothers Get Acquainted
So you're already saving me, though I may not be lost at all!
Joking? They said I was joking at the elder's yesterday. You see, my dear chap,
there was an old sinner in the eighteenth century who delivered himself of the
statement that if there were no God, it would have been necessary to invent him:
S'il n'estait pas Dieu il faudrait l'inventer. And, to be sure, man has
invented God. And what is so strange, and what would be so marvellous, is not
that God actually exists, but that such an idea - the idea of necessity of God-
should have entered the head of such a savage and vicious animal as man - so
holy it is, so moving and so wise and so much does it redound to man's honour
if God really exists, and if he really has created the world, then, as we all
know, he created it in accordance with the Euclidean geometry, and he created
the human mind with the conception of only the three dimensions of space. And
yet there have been and there still are mathematicians and philosophers, some of
them indeed men of extraordinary genius, who doubt whether the whole universe.
or, to put it more widely, all existence was created only according to Euclidean
geometry and they even dare to dream that two parallel lines which, according to
Euclid can never meet on earth, may meet somewhere in infinity. I, my dear chap,
have come to the conclusion that if I can't understand even that, then how can I
be expected to understand about God? I humbly admit that I have no abilities for
settling such questions. I have a Euclidean, an earthly mind, and so how can I
be expected to solve problems which are not of this world.
Rebellion
Oh, all that my pitiful earthly Euclidean mind can grasp is that suffering
exists, that no one is to blame, that effect follows cause, simply and directly,
that everything flows and finds its level - but then this is only Euclidean
nonsense. I know that and I refuse to live by it! What do I care that no one is
to blame, that effect follows cause simply and directly and that I know it – I
must have retribution or I shall destroy myself. And retribution not somewhere
in the infinity of the space and time, but here on earth, and so that I could
see it myself. And if I'm dead by that time, let them resurrect me, for if it
all happens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely the reason for my
suffering was not that I as well as my evil deeds and sufferings may serve as
manure for some future harmony for someone else. I want to see with my own eyes
the lion lie down with the lamb band the murdered man rise up and embrace his
murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly finds out what it has all
been for. All religions on earth are based on this desire, and I am a believer.
We cannot afford to pay so much for admission. And therefore I hasten to return
my ticket of admission. And indeed, if I am an honest man, I'm bound ot hand it
back as soon as possible. This I am doing. It is not God that I do not accept,
Alyosha. I merely most respectfully return him the ticket.'
'This is rebellion' Alyosha said softly, dropping his eyes.
'Rebellion? I;m sorry to hear you say that' Ivan said with feeling.
The Grand Inquisitor
He came down into the hot "streets and lanes" of the southern city just at the
moment when, a day before, nearly a hundred heretics had been burnt all at once
by the cardinal, the Grand Inquisitor, ad majorem gloriam Dei in "a magnificent
auto da fé", in the presence of the king, the court, the knights, the cardinals,
and the fairest ladies of the Court and the whole population of Seville.
And could anything be truer have been said than what he revealed to you in his
three questions and what you rejected, and what you in the books are called
'temptations'? And yet if ever there has been on earth a real, prodigious
miracle, it was on that day, on the day of the three temptations.
You want to go into the world and you are going empty-handed, with some promise
of freedom, which men in their simplicity and their innate lawlessness cannot
even comprehend, which they fear and dread–for nothing has ever been more
unendurable to man and to human society than freedom!
For we alone, we who guard the mystery, we alone shall be unhappy.
We shall deceive them again, for we shall not let you come near us again.
But man seeks to worship only what is incontestable, so incontestable, indeed,
that all men at once agree to worship it all together. For the chief concern of
those miserable creatures is not only to find something that I or someone else
can worship, but to find something all believe in and worship, and the
absolutely essential thing is that they should do so all together.
Or did you forget that a tranquil mind and even death is dearer to man than the
free choice in the knowledge of good and evil? There is nothing more alluring to
man than this freedom of conscience, but there is nothing more tormenting,
either.
From the Life of The Elder Zossima
The worst of it was that, as I learned then, the young landowner had been
engaged to her a long time and that I myself had often met him at her house,
but, blinded by my high opinion of myself, I had noticed nothing.
'Yesterday', I replied gaily, 'I was still a food, but I'm wiser today.'
♚
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