Don’t they understand that in order to acquire an opinion what is needed first of all is labor, one’s own labor, one’s own initiative and experience! Nothing can ever be acquired gratis. If.
I am forty years old now, and you know forty years is a whole lifetime; you know it is extreme old age. To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral.
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.
I remembered you, my brother, and all yours; at the last minute you, you alone, were in my mind, and it was only then that I realized how much I love you, my dearest brother!
Certainly we shall rise, certainly we shall see and gladly, joyfully tell one another all that has been,” Alyosha replied, half laughing, half in ecstasy.
He spoke of many things, he seemed to want to say everything, to speak one last time before the moment of death, to say all that had not been said in his life, and not only for the sake of instruction, but as if he wished to share his joy and ecstasy with all, to pour out his heart once more in this life.
No, not immeasurably: you have abilities, but there’s a great deal you don’t understand, because you’re a low person.
There will be full freedom when it will be just the same to live or not to live.
An inexhaustible love for him lay concealed in her heart in the midst of continual hatred, jealousy, and contempt.
I am very sad, and if only it were possible to resurrect him, I would give everything in the whole world.
Prisoners are submissive and obedient up to a point, but there is a limit which must not be crossed. Nothing is more curious than these strange outbursts of disobedience and rage. Often a man who has for years endured the cruellest punishment will revolt for a trifle, for a mere nothing. He might pass for a madman; that, in fact, is what is said of him.
Brother, in these past two months I’ve sensed a new man in me, a new man has arisen in me! He was shut up inside me, but if it weren’t for this thunderbolt, he never would have appeared.
This is what happens: the sensitive and honest man opens his heart, and the business man listens and takes it all in, so that he can swallow up the honest fellow.
I was always conscious of that weak point of mine, and sometimes very much afraid of it. “I exaggerate everything, that is where I go wrong.
I consider myself an intelligent man, only because all my life I have been able neither to begin nor to finish anything.
I was inwardly conscious with shame that I was not only not a spiteful but not even an embittered man, that I was simply scaring sparrows at random and amusing myself by it. I might foam at the mouth, but bring me a doll to play with, give me a cup of tea with sugar in it, and maybe I should be appeased. I might even be genuinely touched, though probably I should grind my teeth at myself afterwards and lie awake at night with shame for months after. That was my way.
There’s the feather-bed element here, brother, – ach! and not only that! There’s an attraction here – here you have the end of the world, an anchorage, a quiet haven, the navel of the earth, the three fishes that are the foundation of the world, the essence of pancakes, of savoury fish-pies, of the evening samovar, of soft sighs and warm shawls, and hot stoves to sleep on – as snug as though you were dead, and yet you’re alive – the advantages of both at once!
You will behold great sorrow, and in this sorrow be happy.
And what do we read almost daily? Of things beside which the present case grows pale, and seems almost commonplace. But what is most important is that the majority of our national crimes of violence bear witness to a widespread evil, now so general among us that it is difficult to contend against it.
Reality is a thing of infinite diversity, and defies the most ingenious deductions and definitions of abstract thought, nay, abhors the clear and precise classifications in which we so delight. Reality tends to infinite subdivision of things, and truth is a matter of infinite shadings and differentiations.