It’s with such nothings that clever people are thrown off most easily. The cleverer the man, the less he suspects that he can be thrown off with the simplest thing. It’s precisely the simplest thing that will throw off the cleverest man.
Erkel’s fate will be lightened. From the moment of his arrest he either maintained silence or did his best to pervert the truth. Not one word of repentance has been extracted from him so far. And yet even in the most severe judges he has awakened a certain sympathy for himself.
He was simply an early lover of humanity, and that he adopted the monastic life was simply because at that time it struck him, so to say, as the ideal escape for his soul struggling from the darkness of worldly wickedness to the light of love.
A contemptible person, but ready to face suffering!
If God thought it necessary to offer rewards for love, your God must be immoral.
Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise.
Even at sixteen I wondered at them morosely; even then I was struck by the pettiness of their thoughts, the stupidity of their pursuits, their games, their conversations. They had no understanding of such essential things, they took no interest in such striking, impressive subjects, that I could not help considering them inferior to myself.
Never for a single moment have I believed that you are the murderer,” the trembling voice suddenly burst from Alyosha’s breast, and he raised his right hand as if calling on God to witness his words. Mitya’s whole face instantly lit up with bliss.
Oh, he understood very well that for the meek soul of a simple Russian, exhausted by grief and hardship and, above all, by constant injustice and sin, his own or the world’s, there was no stronger need than to find a holy shrine or a saint to prostrate himself before and to worship.
The specialist looks inside your nose and announces: ‘Well, all right, I’ll take care of your right nostril, but I really don’t handle left nostrils;.
But in some cases it is really more creditable to be carried away by an emotion, however unreasonable, which springs from a great love, than to be unmoved. And this is even truer in youth, for a young man who is always sensible is to be suspected and is of little worth-that’s my opinion!
Suffering, too, is a good thing. Suffer!
I was told to ‘love my neighbor,’ and did so, what came of that?” continued Petr Petrovich, perhaps with excessive haste. “What came of it was that I tore my cloak in two, gave half to my neighbor, and we both wound up half naked.
This life you cry up so much is what I wanted to extinguish by suicide, whereas my dream, my dream – oh, it has revealed to me a great, new, regenerated intensity of life!
And it was not that he seemed to have forgotten or intentionally forgiven the affront, but simply that he did not regard it as an affront, and this completely conquered and captivated the boys.
He looked at Sonia and felt how great was her love for him, and strange to say he felt it suddenly burdensome and painful to be so loved. Yes, it was a strange and awful sensation!
People point less often to these monks, and even pass them over in silence, and how surprised they would be if I were to say that from these meek ones, thirsting for solitary prayer, will perhaps come once again the salvation of the Russian land! For truly they are made ready in peace “for the day and the hour, and the month and the year.”1.
Lying is a privilege exclusive to humans among all other beings. It’s by lying that one arrives at the truth! I tell lies; therefore, I’m human.
Alas, I had always loved sorrow and grief, but only for myself, for myself; for them I wept in my pity. I stretched out my arms to them in my despair, accusing, cursing, and despising myself. I told them that I had done all this, I alone, that I had brought them corruption, contagion, and lies!
He could not endure without mortification, without resentment even, that the holiest of holy men should have been exposed to the jeering and spiteful mockery of the frivolous crowd so inferior to him.