No matter. He is holy. He carries in his heart the secret of renewal for all: that power which will, at last, establish truth on the earth, and all men will be holy and love one another, and there will be no more rich nor poor, no exalted nor humbled, but all will be as the children of God, and the true Kingdom of Christ will come.
General silence. Everyone’s eyes turned again to Stavrogin and Verkhovensky. ‘Verkhovensky, you have nothing to announce?’ the hostess asked directly. ‘Absolutely nothing,’ he stretched in his chair and yawned. ‘However, I would like a glass of cognac.’ ‘Stavrogin, what about you?’ ‘No thank you, I don’t drink.’ ‘I’m not talking about cognac, but whether you want to speak or not.’ ‘Speak? About what?’ ‘You’ll be brought some cognac,’ she replied to Verkhovensky.
We are born dead, and moreover we have long ceased to be the sons of living fathers; and we become more and more contented with our condition. We are acquiring the taste for it. Soon we shall invent a method of being born from an idea.
Why must we assume what we imagine, or imagine what we have assumed?
You can never control things with just the police in any society, anywhere. Every one of us, when he goes in, demands that a special policeman be assigned to protect him. They don’t understand that society protects itself. And what do our heads of families, our worthies, our wives, our young girls do in such circumstances? They say nothing and just pout. There’s not even enough social initiative to restrain the pranksters.
Lord, let man dissolve in prayer! How would I be there underground without God? Rakitin’s lying: if God is driven from the earth, we’ll meet him underground! It’s impossible for a convict to be without God, even more impossible than for a non-convict! And then from the depths of the earth, we, the men underground, will start singing a tragic hymn to God, in whom there is joy! Hail to God and his joy! I love him!
An incompetent officer can never understand that to apply the law without understanding its spirit is to invite opposition.
And indeed, here I am posing an idle question of my own now: which is better – cheap happiness or sublime suffering?
You don’t feed nightingales on fairy-tales.
Without strength you get nothing. But strength must be won by strength. That’s just what they don’t know.
Devil knows what I would have given for a real regular quarrel – a more decent, a more literary one, so to speak. I had been treated like a fly. This officer was over six foot, while I was a spindly little fellow. But the quarrel was in my hands. I had only to protest and I certainly would have been thrown out of the window. But I changed my mind and preferred to beat a resentful retreat.
I seem to be afraid of any SERIOUS book – afraid of permitting any SERIOUS preoccupation to break the spell of the passing moment. So dear to me is the formless dream of which I have spoken, so dear to me are the impressions which it has left behind it, that I fear to touch the vision with anything new, lest it should dissolve in smoke. But.
Karamazov, we love you!” a voice, which seemed to be Kartashov’s, exclaimed irrepressibly.
The exposure of the conspiracy, the thanks from Petersburg, a career in the future, the influence of ‘kindness’ on the young people to keep them from falling into the abyss – all this coexisted in complete harmony in her fantastic head.
It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself – as though that were so necessary – that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar.
I am a ridiculous person. Now they call me a madman. That would be a promotion if it were not that I remain as ridiculous in their eyes as before. But now I do not resent it, they are all dear to me now, even when they laugh at me – and, indeed, it is just then that they are particularly dear to me. I could join in their laughter – not exactly at myself, but through affection for them, if I did not feel so sad as I look at them.
But it’s a misfortune to be broad without a special genius.
Man now is not yet the right man. There will be a new man, happy and proud. He for whom it will make no difference whether he lives or does not live, he will be the new man. He who overcomes pain and fear will himself be God. And this God will not be.
The meaning is, that you all bore me to tears and I’d like to be left alone,′ Raskolnikov answered calmly.
All our ladies were besotted with the new visitor. They divided sharply into two camps: one adored him, while the other hated him with a vengeance; but both were besotted nonetheless.