Why is it – as I’ve noticed,” Stepan Trofimovitch whispered to me once, “why is it that all these desperate socialists and communists are at the same time such incredible skinflints, so avaricious, so keen over property, and, in fact, the more socialistic, the more extreme they are, the keener they are over property... why is it? Can that, too, come from sentimentalism?” I.
Love is higher than existence, love is the crown of existence; and how is it possible that existence should not be under its dominance?
For our children-not your children, but ours-the children of the poor gentlemen looked down upon by everyone-know what justice means, sir, even at nine years old. How should the rich know? They don’t explore such depths once in their lives. But at that moment in the square when he kissed his hand, at that moment my Ilusha had grasped all that justice means.
What’s more, any memoirs by eyewitnesses are a treasure, no matter who the eyewitness happens to be. Don’t you think so?
Stupidity is brief and guileless, while reason hedges and hides. Reason is a scoundrel, stupidity is direct and honest.
The whole point of my article is that in ancient times, during its first three centuries, Christianity was revealed on earth only by the Church, and was only the Church. But when the pagan Roman state desired to become Christian, it inevitably so happened that, having become Christian, it merely included the Church in itself, but itself continued to be, as before, a pagan state in a great many of its functions.
Is it not enough that I am devoured, without my being expected to bless the power that devours me?
Above all, avoid lies, all lies, especially the lie to yourself. Keep watch on your own lie and examine it every hour, every minute. And avoid contempt, both of others and of yourself: what seems bad to you in yourself is purified by the very fact that you have noticed it in yourself.
He hired a stenographer, Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina, from the only agency in St Petersburg and dictated The Gambler, before completing Crime and Punishment. A few months later, he married her, one of the smartest moves he ever made. She adored him, bore him four children, cured him of gambling and set his business affairs in order.
Oh, we will allow them to sin, too; they are weak and powerless, and they will love us like children for allowing them to sin. We will tell them that every sin will be redeemed if it is committed with our permission; and that we allow them to sin because we love them, and as for the punishment for these sins, very well, we take it upon ourselves.
But why, if you are so clever, do you lie here like a sack and have nothing to show for it? One time you used to go out, you say, to teach children. But why is it you do nothing now?” “I am doing... ” Raskolnikov began sullenly and reluctantly. “What are you doing?” “Work... ” “What sort of work?” “I am thinking,” he answered seriously after a pause.
His wife, however, happened to be the only woman in his life who failed totally to arouse any passion in him whatsoever.
Siberia taught Dostoyevsky much that would be fictionalized in Demons, including criminal speech, the criminal mind and the ways of officialdom.
My poem is called ‘The Grand Inquisitor’ – an absurd thing, but I want you to hear it.
We will allow or forbid them to live with their wives and mistresses, to have or not to have children – all depending on their obedience – and they will submit to us gladly and joyfully.
That kind always has the public good as a motive to justify every abomination.
What do I care about all this beauty, when every minute, every second, I must and am forced to know that even this tiny fly that is now buzzing near me in a ray of sunlight, even it participates in this banquet and chorus, knows its place, loves it, and is happy, while I alone am a castaway, and only in my pusillanimity did not want to understand it till now!
Don’t tell me! You’re just rubbing it in! It serves me right, though: it was vanity that kept me from coming, egoistic vanity and base despotism, which I haven’t been able to get rid of all my life, though all my life I’ve been trying to break myself.
Suddenly, yesterday, at four o’clock in the afternoon, a gentleman of exceptional stoutness enters the foreigner’s shop in an intoxicated condition, pays his entrance money, and immediately without any warning leaps into the jaws of the crocodile, who was forced, of course, to swallow him, if only from an instinct of self-preservation, to avoid being crushed.
It’s not that I don’t accept God, you must understand, it’s the world created by Him I don’t and cannot accept.