One other circumstance tormented me then: namely, that no one else was like me, and I was like no one else. “I am one, and they are all,” thought I, and – I’d fall to thinking.
Latterly he tormented me, too: it was all quite natural, human beings are created in order to torment one another.
Oh, Karamazov, I am deeply unhappy. I sometimes imagine God only knows what, that everyone is laughing at me, the entire world, and at such moments, at such moments I am quiet simply ready to annihilate the entire order of things.
However kind people may be to me, I never feel quite at home with them, and am always glad to get back to my little companions. Now my companions have always been children, not because I was a child myself once, but because young things attract me.
It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young, dear reader. The sky was so starry, so bright that, looking at it, one could not help asking oneself whether ill-humoured and capricious people could live under such a sky.
And do you know, Sonia, that low ceilings and tiny rooms cramp the soul and the mind?
In short, one may say anything about the history of the world – anything that might enter the most disordered imagination. The only thing one can’t say is that it’s rational. The very word sticks in one’s throat.
But we realize precisely that if there is no legal right here, there’s a human right, a natural one; the right of common sense and the voice of conscience, and even though this right of ours is not written down in any rotten human code of law, a decent and honest man, a right-thinking man, that’s to say, is obliged to remain a decent and honest man even on those points that aren’t written down in the law books.
Gentle and kindly creatures don’t put up much resistance and, though they may not reveal much of themselves, they have no idea of how to evade a conversation: they are sparing in their replies but they do reply, and the longer it goes on, the more you learn, but you have to keep at it, if that’s what you’re after.
The prince took off his tin cross, Parfyon his gold one, and they exchanged them.
But the Church, like a mother, tender and loving, withholds from active punishment, for even without her punishment, the wrongdoer is already too painfully punished by the state court, and at least someone should pity him.
Do not answer, be silent. After all, what could you say? I know too well what you would say. And you have no right to add anything to what you already said once.
What is the mother of God? What do you think?′ ‘The great mother,’ I answer, ‘the hope of the human race.’ ‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘the mother of God is the great mother – the damp earth, and therein lies great joy for men. And every earthly woe and every earthly tear is a joy for us; and when you water the earth with your tears a foot deep, you will rejoice at everything at once, and your sorrow will be no more, such is the prophecy.’ That.
Alyosha exclaimed. “I think that everyone should love life before everything else in the world.” “Love life more than its meaning?” “Certainly, love it before logic, as you say, certainly before logic, and only then will I also understand its meaning.
You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen. And a fine thing, too, in its way; but we can’t even make mistakes on our own account! Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I’ll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.
And even if, in this manifestation, our life frequently turns out to be rubbishy, it’s nevertheless life and not just the extraction of a square root.
And yet all these questions were not new ones suddenly confronting him, they were old familiar aches. It was long since they had first begun to grip and rend his heart. Long, long ago his present anguish had its first beginnings; it had waxed and gathered strength, it had matured and concentrated, until it had taken the form of a fearful, frenzied and fantastic question, which tortured his heart and mind, clamouring insistently for an answer.
But, my God!” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly cried out, clasping her hands. “And he! He could be so dishonest, so inhuman! He told.
They wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in their eyes. They were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with the dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life.
I know your thoughts. Your heart is better than your head.