So when we are unhappy we feel the unhappiness of others more; feeling is not destroyed but concentrated...
In a word, the right granted to a man to inflict corporal punishment on his fellow-men, is one of the plague-spots of our society.
But let it pass, and to hell with all who pry into the human heart!
People have grown accustomed to having everything ready-made for them, they’re used to depending on the guidance of others, having everything chewed up for them first. Well, and when the great hour finally struck, they all showed themselves at face value...
In a word, the world spoke well of the girls; but they were not without their enemies, and occasionally people talked with horror of the number of books they had read.
Our budding, still timid press has all the same rendered some service to society, for without it we should never have learned, in any measure of fullness, of those horrors of unbridled will and moral degradation that it ceaselessly reports in its pages, to everyone, not merely to those who attend the sessions of the new open courts granted us by the present reign.
My eyes gleamed with passion, and I gripped her hands tightly. How I hated her and how I was drawn to her at that minute! The one feeling intensified the other. It was almost like an act of vengeance.
Brothers, have no fear of men’s sin. Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all of God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things.
Nevertheless, vanity and conceit are defects from which scarcely any convict is exempt.
It’s perfectly clear to me now that it was I who, owing to my boundless vanity, and hence also my exactingness towards myself, very often looked upon myself with furious dissatisfaction, reaching the point of loathing, and therefore mentally attributed my view to everyone else.
I’ve fallen in love with and it was the end of me. But to fall in love does not mean to love. One can fall in love and still hate. Remember that! I say it now while there’s still joy in it.
To her, and to father! Whew! A coincidence! Why was I calling you, wishing for you, why was I longing and thirsting for you with every curve of my soul and even with my ribs? Because I wanted to send you precisely to father, and then to her as well, to Katerina Ivanovna, to have done with her and with father. To send an angel. I could have sent anybody, but I need to send an angel. And here you are going to her and father yourself.
Everyone must look out for himself, and the best time is had by those who’re best able to decieve themselves.
The convict is greedy for money, to the point of madness, and if he throws it away he does so in order to procure what he values far above money – liberty, or at least semblance of liberty.
If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also. The Apostle Thomas said that he would not believe till he saw, but when he did see he said, “My Lord and my God!” Was it the miracle forced him to believe? Most likely not, but he believed solely because he desired to believe and possibly he fully believed in his secret heart even when he said, “I do not believe till I see.
Such suffering and terror were what Christ spoke of.7 No, a human being should not be treated like that!’ Although he could not have put all this into words as the prince had done, the valet understood, if not all of it, then the main point, and this was even visible in his features, which showed that he was moved.
I wanted to tell you of a longing I have. I should like some one to torture me, marry me and then torture me, deceive me and go away. I don’t want to be happy.” “You are in love with disorder?
Yes, guilty.’ It is better to let ten who are guilty go, than to punish one who is innocent – do you hear, do you hear this majestic voice from the last century of our glorious history?
Rakitin doesn’t like God, oof, how he doesn’t! That’s the sore spot in all of them! But they conceal it. They lie. They pretend. ‘What, are you going to push for that in the department of criticism?’ I asked. ‘Well, they won’t let me do it openly,’ he said, and laughed. ‘But,’ I asked, ’how will man be after that? Without God and the future life? It means everything is permitted now, one can do anything?
We invent casuistical arguments for ourselves, we take a lesson from the Jesuits, and, for a time, contrive to allay our own doubts and convince ourselves that what we are doing is necessary, absolutely necessary, in a good cause. That is the way we are made; it is all as clear as daylight.