Each blade of grass, each little bug, ant, golden bee, knows its way amazingly; being without reason, they witness to the divine mystery, they ceaselessly enact it.
And you still did not think of washing your hands even as you entered Mr. Perkhotin’s? In other words, you were not afraid of arousing suspicion?
Hate not the atheists, the teachers of evil, the materialists- and I mean not only the good ones- for there are many good ones among them, especially in our day- hate not even the wicked ones.
No one is your judge now,’ Mavriky Nikolayevich stated firmly, ’may God forgive you; I’m less worthy than anyone of being your judge!
It is that instinctive need of having a worship in common that is the chief suffering of every man, the chief concern of mankind from the beginning of times. It is for that universality of religious worship that people destroyed each other by sword.
Cards! Me sit down to whist with you! Is it consistent? Who is responsible for it? Who has shattered my energies and turned them to whist? Ah, perish, Russia!
Oh, tell me, who was it first announced, who was it first proclaimed, that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own interests.
Only a little tiny seed is needed – drop it into the heart of the peasant and it won’t die, it will live in his soul all his life, it will be hidden in the midst of his darkness and sin, like a bright spot, like a great reminder. And there’s no need of much teaching or explanation, he will understand it all simply.
That little word “why” has run through all the universe from the first day of creation, and all nature cries every minute to its Creator: “Why?” And for seven thousand years it has had no answer, and must Captain Lebyadkin alone answer? And is it justice, madam?
The old man himself points out to him that he has no right to add anything to what has already been said once. That, if you like, is the most basic feature of Roman Catholicism, in my opinion at least: ‘Everything,’ they say, ’has been handed over by you to the pope, therefore everything now belongs to the pope, and you may as well not come at all now, or at least don’t interfere with us for the time being.
He who loses his people and his national character loses both the faith of his fathers and God.
Everything, even his crime, his sentence and imprisonment, seemed to him now in the first rush of feeling an external, strange fact with which he had no concern. But he could not think for long together of anything that evening, and he could not have analysed anything consciously; he was simply feeling. Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.
Here, brother, contempt is no use, even if he does despise Grushenka. He may despise her, but he still can’t tear himself away from her.
When she was given a kopeck, she would accept it and at once take it and put it in some poor box in the church or prison. When she was given a roll or a bun in the marketplace, she always went and gave this roll or bun to the first child she met, or else she would stop some one of our wealthiest ladies and give it to her; and the ladies would even gladly accept it. She herself lived only on black bread and water.
But, as so often happens, crimes committed with extraordinary boldness are more likely to succeed than any others.
Every one who wants the supreme freedom must dare to kill himself. He who dares to kill himself has found out the secret of the deception. There is no freedom beyond; that is all, and there is nothing beyond. He who dares kill himself is God. Now every one can do so that there shall be no God and shall be nothing. But no one has once done it yet.
I think I must be one of those who are born to be in luck, for one does not often meet with people whom one feels he can love from the first sight of their faces.
What is most vile and despicable about money is that it even confers talent.
Gradually, however, i grew accustomed to this too. I grew accustomed to everything, that is, i didn’t actually grow accustomed but somehow agreed of my own free will to grin and bear it.
Until one has indeed become the brother of all, there will be no brotherhood.