Demons Dostoevsky Quotes

God is the pain of the fear of death

You cannot imagine what sorrow and anger seize one's whole soul when a great idea, which one has long and piously revered, is picked up by some bunglers and dragged into the street, to more fools like themselves, and one suddenly meets it in the flea market, unrecognizable, dirty, askew, absurdly presented, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid children.

Do you believe in a future everlasting life? No, not in a future everlasting but in an everlasting life here. There are moments, you reach moments, and time comes to a sudden stop, and it will become eternal.

So, according to you, the other God does exist after all?' 'He doesn't exist, but He is. There's no pain in a stone, but there's pain in the fear of a stone.

...and in fact I've noticed that faith always seems to be less in the daytime

You’re very clever and learned, but you know nothing at all about life.

Life is now given to man at the cost of pain and fear. Here, they are blinded by this sometimes. Now man is not yet that man. There will be another, new person, happy and proud, and for him it wouldn’t matter the death-life. He who overcomes pain and fear will become God himself. There will not be that God any longer.

We are all to blame, we are all to blame … and if only all were convinced of it!

There are crimes that are truly uncomely. With crimes, whatever they may be, the more blood, the more horror there is, the more imposing they are, the more picturesque, so to speak, but there are crimes that are shameful, disgraceful, all horror aside, so to speak, even far too ungracious...

I don’t understand how, up to now, an atheist could know there is no God and not kill himself at once. To recognize that there is no God, and not to recognize at the same time that you have become God, is an absurdity, otherwise you must necessarily kill yourself. Once you recognize it, you are king, and you will not kill yourself but will live in the chiefest glory. But one, the one who is first, must necessarily kill himself, otherwise who will begin and prove it? It is I who will necessarily kill myself in order to begin and prove it. I am still God against my will, and I am unhappy, because it is my duty to proclaim self-will. Everyone is unhappy, because everyone is afraid to proclaim self-will. That is why man has been so unhappy and poor up to now, because he was afraid to proclaim the chief point of self-will and was self-willed only on the margins, like a schoolboy. I am terribly unhappy, because I am terribly afraid. Fear is man’s curse … But I will proclaim self-will, it is my duty to believe that I do not believe. I will begin, and end, and open the door. And save. Only this one thing will save all men and in the next generation transform them physically; for in the present physical aspect, so far as I have thought, it is in no way possible for man to be without the former God. For three years I have been searching for the attribute of my divinity, and I have found it: the attribute of my divinity is—Self-will! That is all, by which I can show in the main point my insubordination and my new fearsome freedom. For it is very fearsome. I kill myself to show my insubordination and my new fearsome freedom.” Dostoevsky, Fyodor (2010-05-06). Demons (Vintage Classics) (p. 619). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Dostoevsky’s Demons.

local Jews, who, over the past two years, as if on purpose, had been settling in terrible quantities in our town,

The first discovery of Dostoievsky is, for a spiritual adventurer, such a shock as is not likely to occur again. One is staggered, bewildered, insulted. It is like a hit in the face, at the end of a dark passage; a hit in the face, followed by the fumbling of strange hands at one's throat. Everything that has been forbidden, by discretion, by caution, by self-respect, by atavistic inhibition, seems suddenly to leap up out of the darkness and seize upon one with fierce, indescribable caresses. 　　All that one has felt, but has not dared to think; all that one has thought, but has not dared to say; all the terrible whispers from the unspeakable margins; all the horrible wreckage and silt from the unsounded depths, float in upon us and overpower us. There is so much that the other writers, even the realists among them, cannot, will not, say. There is so much that the normal self-preservative instincts in ourselves do not want said. But this Russian has no mercy. Such exposures humiliate and disgrace? What matter? It is well that we should be so laid bare. Such revelations provoke and embarrass? What matter? We require embarrassment. The quicksilver of human consciousness must have no closed chinks, no blind alleys. It must be compelled to reform its microcosmic reflections, even down there, where it has to be driven by force. It is extraordinary how superficial even the great writers are; how lacking in the Mole's claws, in the Woodpecker's beak! They seem labouring beneath some pathetic vow, exacted by the Demons of our Fate, under terrible threats, only to reveal what will serve their purpose! This applies as much to the Realists, with their traditional animal chemistry, as to the Idealists, with their traditional ethical dynamics. It applies, above all, to the interpreters of Sex, who, in their conventional grossness, as well as in their conventional discretion, bury such Ostrich heads in the sand!

There are strange friendships,” Dostoevsky writes, with reference to Stepan Trofimovich and Varvara Petrovna in Demons. “Two friends are almost ready to eat each other, they live like that all their lives, and yet they cannot part. Parting is even impossible: the friend who waxes capricious and breaks it off will be the first to fall sick and die.” A marvelous passage, communicating so economically the diabolical undercurrent of certain friendships, their weird fatalism.

There’s nothing more devious than one’s own self, because no one will believe it. And, I admit I had wanted to play the fool, because a fool is easier than one’s own self; but since a fool is an extreme, after all, and an extreme sparks curiosity, then I finally settled on my very own self.

Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it. Putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before. And although you are physically by yourself, the haunting Demon never leaves you, that Demon being the knowledge of your own terrible limitations, your hopeless inadequacy, the impossibility of ever getting it right. No matter how diamond-bright your ideas are dancing in your brain, on paper they are earthbound. If you’re trying a screenplay, you know it’s never going to be Bergman. If it’s a novel, well, what kind of a novelist can you hope to be when Dostoevski was there before you. And Dickens and Cervantes and all the other masters that led you to the prison of your desk. But if you’re a writer, that’s what you must do, and in order to accomplish anything at all, at the rock bottom of it all is your confidence. You tell yourself lies and you force them into belief: Hey, you suckers, I’m going to do it this one time. I’m going to tell you things you never knew. I’ve—got—secrets!

Everything is competing to show its good will. Things tend irresistibly towards perfection, effusiveness, reconciliation. Fortunately, nothing is ever perfect, thanks to Dostoevsky's 'unspeakable little demon ... that evil spirit that prompts to murder and scorn.' Everything tends irresistibly towards transparency. However, there remains a glimmer of secrecy - a clandestine dust-breeding that is mostly useless, an umbilical mirage, insider trading, but secret all the same.

Life is pain, life is fear, and man is unhappy. Now all is pain and fear. Now man loves life because he loves pain and fear. That’s how they’ve made it. Life now is given in exchange for pain and fear, and that is the whole deceit. 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.

My friend, I've told lies all my life. Even when I was speaking the truth. I never said anything for the sake of truth, but only for myself. I knew that before, but only now do I see it... Oh, where are those friends whom I have offended with my friendship my whole life? And it's all of them, all of them! Savez-vous, perhaps I'm lying even now; I'm probably lying even now. The main thing is that I believe myself when I lie. The hardest thing in life is to live and not lie... and... and not to believe your own lies, yes, yes, that's it precisely! But wait a moment, more of that later... We're together, together!' he added with enthusiasm.

В преходните времена тая сган, която я има във всяко общество, се надига, и при това не само че няма никакви цели, но няма дори капка разум и с всички сили изразява единствено тревога и нетърпение. Същевременно тая сган, без да подозира, почти винаги попада под командата на тайфата действащи с определена цел „напредничави“, която пък насочва всичките тия отрепки на обществото натам, накъдето й е угодно, освен ако самата тя не се състои от пълни идиоти, което впрочем също се случва.

MSB: La Rochefoucauld says that Cardinal de Retz (whom he didn't like) looked upon Pascal as a great rival. RG: The cardinal didn't have Pascal's genius, but he did have the human experience that Pascal lacked as both a very sick and a very lonely man. Montaigne, on the other hand, was too happy, too untroubled. Montaigne really prefigures the French bourgeois who has tasted success—the rat in his cheese, as one might say. MSB: You consider Montaigne's carefree spirit as a form of social blindness. Do you see a comparable danger in the determination to experience love as the only thing, the last thing possible in life? One finds this determination embodied, for example, by Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky's The Idiot. RG: Prince Myshkin is an ambiguous, ambivalent character, and to consider him as truly good, as many people do, is an error. Looking at Dostoevsky's notebooks for The Idiot, we see that Prince Myshkin, just like Stavrogin in The Demons, is the hypostasis of a person who has no desire. The absence of desire is Stavrogin's weakness, his suicidal side. He makes all sorts of attempts to arouse in others the desire, the mimetic desire, that he doesn't have. This is very clear in the duels: he always wins, because he never loses his nerve. Myshkin's attitude is much the same, I believe. Dostoevsky himself, confronted with a personality that was stronger than his own, wondered if it was the result of an excess of desire, or of a total absence of it. His notebooks make it clear that Stavrogin and Myshkin are monstrous figures who lack the same thing. Like Stavrogin, Myshkin has a negative effect on people around him—General Ivolgin, for example. Women fall in love with him because he has no mimetic desire. They are therefore his victims, although Myshkin himself seems not to understand what is going on. Isn't this precisely because he is unacquainted with mimetic desire? It seems to be a kind of physical defect, almost a biological deficiency. Otherwise, Myshkin must be regarded as a kind of Buddhist. One character in The Idiot wonders whether Myshkin isn't carrying out a deliberate strategy. His attitude may well be entirely calculating, who knows? Dostoevsky himself, it seems to me, hadn't answered these questions in his own mind. MSB

James Baldwin once reflected, “It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.

There are things... of which it is not only impossible to speak intelligently, but of which it is not intelligent even to begin speaking.

If you want to overcome the whole world , overcome yourself.

There are seconds, they only come five or six at a time, and you suddenly feel the presence of eternal harmony, fully achieved. It is nothing earthly; not that it’s heavenly, but man cannot endure it in his earthly state. One must physically change or die. The feeling is clear and indisputable. As if you suddenly sense the whole of nature and suddenly say: yes this is true. God, when he was creating the world, said at the end of each day of creation: ‘Yes this is true, this is good.’ This. . . this is not tenderheartedness, but simply joy. You don’t forgive anything, because there’s no longer anything to forgive. You don’t really love—oh, what is here is higher than love! What’s most frightening is that it’s so terribly clear and there’s such joy. If it were longer than five seconds—the soul couldn’t endure it and would vanish. In those five seconds I live my life through, and for them I would give my whole life, because it’s worth it.

And do you know, do you know that mankind can live without the Englishman, it. An live without Germany, it can live only too well without the Russian man, it can live without science, without bread, and it only cannot live without beauty, for then there would be nothing at all to do in the world! The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here! Science itself would not stand for a minute without beauty—are you aware of that, you who are laughing?—it would turn into boorishness, you couldn’t invent the nail! . . . I will not yield!

Back when I was serving with the hussars, I kept reflecting about God. It’s an accepted fact that in all poems that a hussar drinks and carouses; so, sir, maybe I did drink, but, would you believe, I used to jump out of bed in the middle of the night, just in my socks, and start crossing myself in front of the icon, asking God to send me faith, because even then I couldn’t be at peace: is there God or not?

Bu bir alçaklık ve bütün yalan da burada, diye ba­ğırdı gözleri parlayarak. Yaşam acıdır. Yaşam korkudur ve in­san mutsuzdur. Bugün her şey acı ve korkudur. Bugün insan yaşamı seviyor çünkü acı ve korkuyu seviyor. Böyle gelmiş böyle gidiyor. Yaşam kendisini acı ve korku olarak gösteriyor. Yalan burada işte. Bugün insan, insan değil daha. Yeni bir insan ge­lecek. Mutlu ve gururlu. Onun için yaşamak veya yaşamamak aynı şey olacak. İşte yeni insan. Acı ve korkuyu yenen insanın kendisi Tanrı olacak. Öteki Tanrı olmayacak artık.

My friend, I’ve been telling lies all my life. Even when I told the truth I never spoke for the sake of the truth, but always for my own sake. I knew it before, but I only see it now.… Oh, where are those friends whom I have insulted with my friendship all my life? And all, all! Savez-vous … perhaps I am telling lies now; no doubt I am telling lies now. The worst of it is that I believe myself when I am lying. The hardest thing in life is to live without telling lies … and without believing in one’s lies. Yes, yes, that’s just it.… But wait a bit, that can all come afterwards.… We’ll be together, together,” he added enthusiastically.

I’ve rarely met a more limp woman, and besides, her legs are swollen, and besides, she is kind.

kept repeating until daybreak to him: ‘You are still useful; you will still make your mark; you will be valued… in some other place.

he’s flighty, he dithers, he’s cruel, he’s an egotist, he has base habits, but you should appreciate him, first of all, if only because there are those who are far worse.

I can't understand how an atheist could could know that there is no God and not kill himself on the spot.

I can't understand how an atheist could know that there is no God and not kill himself on the spot.

Pyotr Stepanovich was perhaps not a stupid man, but Fedka the Convict got it just right when he said of him that 'he himself goes and invents a man and then lives with him'. He left von Lembke fully convinced that he'd calmed him down for at least six days, and this was the length of time that was absolutely necessary to him. But his idea was false, and was entirely and solely based on his having invented from the very outset an Andrey Antonovich, once and for all, who was a complete and utter simpleton. As with every morbidly suspicious man, Andrey Antonovich was extremely and happily trustful the moment he emerged from the realm of the unknown. This new turn of events at first presented itself to him in a rather pleasant light, despite certain troublesome complications that were again beginning to appear. At least his old doubts were crumbling into dust. Besides, he had grown so tired over the past few days, he felt himself so exhausted and helpless that his soul could not help but yearn for peace. But alas! He already felt uneasy again.

Oh, don't try to frighten me with your shouting now, the old Stepan Trofimovich no longer stands before you. He is dead and buried; enfin, tout est dit. And what are you shouting for anyway? Only because you yourself are not getting married and will not have to wear a certain ornament on your head. Does this grate on you again? My poor friend, you don't know women, whereas I've done nothing else but study them. "If you want to conquer the entire world, conquer yourself" - that's the only thing that another man like yourself, a romantic, Shatov, my fiancée's brother, has succeeded in saying well. I gladly borrow his maxim. Well. Here I am, ready to conquer myself by getting married, while wondering what I shall gain instead of the whole world. Oh my friend, marriage is the moral death of any proud soul, of any independence. Married life will corrupt me, will take away my energy and my courage in the service of the institution; children will come along, though perhaps not mine, that is, of course not mine; a wise man is not afraid to look truth in the face...

Life exists, but death doesn't exist at all.

My words don't constitute permission or a prescription, and therefore there's no insult to your self-esteem.

My words don't constitute permission or a prescription, and therefore there's no insult to your self-esteem. If you had wanted to take my place at the altar, you could have done so without any permission from me, and then there would of course have been no reason for me to come to you with this madness.

Generally speaking, in every misfortune that befalls one's neighbour there is something that gladdens the eye of the onlooker, it doesn't make any difference who you may be.

And add the observation... that we always find something pleasing in someone else's misfortune.

And add the observation of the thinker that we always find something pleasing in someone else's misfortune.' [...] 'Really? And perhaps there is a little something in your soul that delights you about my misfortune?

The horror [in society] will be widespread, and of course more false than sincere. People are fearful only of whatever threatens their personal interests.

Even the form of a great act of repentance like this one does have something ridiculous about it. Oh, don't believe that you won't prevail!' he exclaimed almost in ecstasy. 'Even this form will prevail' (he pointed at the pages) 'if only you will sincerely accept being slapped and spat upon. The end result has always been that the most shameful cross becomes a great glory and a great power, if the great deed has been sincerely humble. Perhaps you will find consolation even in your lifetime!' 'And so, what you find ridiculous is just in the form, in the style?' 'And in the substance. The ugliness will kill it,' Tikhon whispered, lowering his eyes. 'What's that? Ugliness? Where's the ugliness?' 'Of the crime. There are crimes that are truly ugly. In crimes, of whatever kind, the more blood and horror there is, the more appealing they are, or, so to speak, picturesque. But there are shameful crimes, disgraceful ones that transcend any horror, so to speak, even too inelegant, actually...' Tikhon, did not finish speaking. 'In other words,' an agitated Stavrogin picked up his thought, 'you find that I cut a highly ridiculous figure when I kissed the foot of the dirty little girl... and everything I said about my temperament, and... well, and everything else... I understand. I understand you very well. And you despair of me precisely because it's not pretty, its disgusting - no, not so much disgusting as shameful and ridiculous, and you think that's what I wont be able to bear most of all?

I would perhaps compare him with some gentleman of the past, of whom our society keeps alive certain legendary memories. People used to say, for example, of the Decembrist Lunin, that he purposely sought out danger all his life, would revel in the sensation of it, would it a make a necessary part of his nature. In his youth he would fight a duel for no reason. In Siberia he would go after a bear with just a knife, and in the Siberian forests he loved to come across escaped convicts, who, I will note in passing, were more terrifying than any bear. There is no doubt that these legendary gentlemen were capable of experiencing, and even perhaps to a high degree, a sense of fear; otherwise, they would have been much more calm, and the sense of danger would not have become a necessary part of their nature. But to overcome cowardice in themselves - that, of course, is what proved so seductive. The constant revelling in victory and the awareness that there was no one who could get the better of you - that's what attracted them.

But by now he was babbling mechanically. He was utterly crushed by the news and was completely disoriented. And yet, almost immediately, the minute he walked out on to the front steps and opened the umbrella over his head, the ever-consoling thought once again began to hatch in his frivolous and roguish head that people were deceiving him and lying to him, and if so, then he had nothing to fear, but was the one to be feared.

If you want to conquer the entire world, conquer yourself.

And what you said to me about charity, for example? And yet the pleasure of charity is an arrogant and immoral pleasure, a rich man's pleasure in his riches, his power, and in the comparison of his significance with the significance of the beggar. Charity corrupts both him who gives and him who takes, and, moreover, does not achieve its goal, because it only increases beggary.

Nationalism, if you like, has never existed among us except as a distraction for gentlemen’s clubs, and Moscow ones at that. I’m not talking of the days of Igor, of course. And besides it all comes of idleness. Everything in Russia comes of idleness, everything good and fine even. It all springs from the charming, cultured, whimsical idleness of our gentry! I’m ready to repeat it for thirty thousand years. We don’t know how to live by our own labour. And as for the fuss they’re making now about the ‘dawn’ of some sort of public opinion, has it so suddenly dropped from heaven without any warning? How is it they don’t understand that before we can have an opinion of our own we must have work, our own work, our own initiative in things, our own experience. Nothing is to be gained for nothing. If we work we shall have an opinion of our own. But as we never shall work, our opinions will be formed for us by those who have hitherto done the work instead of us, that is, as always, Europe, the everlasting Germans—our teachers for the last two centuries.

And do you know, do you know that mankind can live without the Englishman, it can live without Germany, it can live only too well without the Russian man, it can live without science, without BREAD, and it only cannot live without beauty. . . . Demons Fyodor Dostoevsky (1872)

And anyone who has no people has no God either! You can be quite sure that all who cease to understand their own people and lose their ties with them, immediately and to the same extent, also lose the faith of their fathers, and either become atheists or indifferent.

Everyone has been falling for a long time, and everyone has known for a long time that there is nothing to grab on to.

For a Russian, honour is only an unnecessary burden. What’s more, it has always been a burden, for his entire history.

He proposes, as a final solution to the question, the division of mankind into two unequal parts. One-tenth is to receive personal freedom and unlimited rights over the remaining nine-tenths.6 The latter are to lose their individuality and turn into something like cattle, and with this unlimited obedience attain, through a series of regenerations, a primordial innocence, something like the primordial paradise, although they will have to work. The measures proposed by the author for depriving nine-tenths of mankind of their will and refashioning them into a herd by means of the re-education of entire generations are most remarkable, based on the data of nature, and very logical.

Gente alicorta, ¿qué más os hace falta para entender? ¿Es que no sabéis que la humanidad puede seguir viviendo sin los ingleses, sin Alemania y, por descontado, sin los rusos; que es posible vivir sin ciencia, vivir sin pan, pero en cambio es imposible vivir sin belleza, pues no habría nada que hacer en el mundo? ¡Ahí está todo el secreto, ahí está toda la historia. ¡Nos precipitaríamos en la barbarie...

Sospeché de inmediato que, si usted me evitaba, era porque estaba casado y no porque me despreciase. Comprendí que era a mí, a una insensata como yo, a quien trataba de proteger con su huida. Ya ve como aprecio su generosidad. Me he quemado en una vela, nada más. Tampoco quiero ser la enfermera de un corazón herido

Then history will be divided into two parts: from the gorilla to the annihilation of God, and from the annihilation of God to…’ ‘To the gorilla?

I thought at first that I would say nothing; but to say nothing, you know, is a great talent, and therefore unsuitable for me, and in the second place, it’s really rather dangerous to keep silent.

The result would be, in the first place, that you’ve convinced people of your simplemindedness, bored them to death and been incomprehensible — all three advantages simultaneously! I ask you, who’s going to suspect you of harbouring secret designs after that?

But wasn’t it you who told me that if it were to be mathematically proven to you that the truth existed apart from Christ, then you would rather remain with Christ than with the truth?

This force is the force of an unquenchable desire to go on to the end, while at the same time denying the end.

The stronger a people, the more singular its God. There has never yet been a people without religion, that is, without the concept of evil and good.

In particular, this is the distinguishing feature of half-science, mankind’s most dreadful scourge, worse than plague, famine and war, and it has been unknown until the present century. Half-science is a despot such as has never been seen until now. A despot who has his high priests and his slaves, a despot before whom all have prostrated themselves with love and superstition such as has been unthinkable until now, before which even science itself trembles and to which it shamefully panders.

if one were to commit an evil deed or, more important, a shameful act, that is, something disgraceful, but very base indeed and… absurd, so that people would remember it for a thousand years and hold it in contempt for a thousand years, and suddenly comes the thought: “A single blow in the temple, and after that, nothing”. Then what would I care about people and the fact that they’d hold me in contempt for a thousand years, isn’t that so?

Time isn’t an object, but an idea.

I stopped the clock, it was twenty-three minutes to three.’ ‘As a symbol that time should stop?’ Kirillov said nothing.

Drop your tone and adopt a human one! For at least once in your life start speaking in a human voice.

The first thing is to lower the level of education, science and accomplishment.1 A high level of science and accomplishment is accessible only to people of high ability, and there’s no need for high ability! People of high ability have always seized power and been despots. People of high ability can’t help but be despots and have always corrupted more than they have brought benefit; they are sent into exile or executed. Cicero had his tongue cut out, Copernicus had his eyes put out, Shakespeare2 was stoned — that’s Shigalyovism! Slaves should be equal; without despotism there has never yet been either freedom or equality, but there should be equality in the herd, and that’s Shigalyovism! Ha, ha, ha. Do you find that strange? I’m for Shigalyovism!

is only without beauty that we cannot continue, for there will be nothing at all to do in the world! That’s where the whole secret lies, that’s where the whole of history lies! Science itself would not last a minute without beauty — do you know about that, you who are laughing now? —it would turn into loutishness, you wouldn’t even be able to invent the nail!…

In troubled times, times of uncertainty or transition, various low types of people always and everywhere appear.

And do you know, do you know that mankind can live without the Englishman, it can live without Germany, it can live only too well without the Russian man, it can live without science, without BREAD, and it only cannot live without beauty. . . . Demons Fyodor Dostoevsky (1872)

In each case, with each voice of this many-voiced composition, we have sought “natural” English equivalents for the richly unnatural languages of the original.

Don’t they understand that in order to acquire an opinion what is needed first of all is labor, one’s own labor, one’s own initiative and experience! Nothing can ever be acquired gratis. If we labor, we shall have our own opinion. And since we shall never labor, those who have been working for us all along will have the opinion instead—that is, Europe again, the Germans again, our teachers from two hundred years back. Besides, Russia is too great a misunderstanding for us to resolve ourselves, without the Germans and without labor. For twenty years now I’ve been ringing the alarm and calling to labor! I’ve given my life to this call, and—madman—I believed! Now I no longer believe, but I still ring and shall go on ringing to the end, to my grave; I shall pull on the rope until the bells ring for my funeral!

And those who have no people, have no God! You may be sure that all those who cease to understand their people and lose their connection with them, at once, in the same measure, also lose the faith of their fathers, and become either atheists or indifferent.

why is it that all these desperate socialists and communists are at the same time such incredible misers, acquirers, property-lovers, so much so that the more socialist a man is, the further he goes, the more he loves property … why is it?

To kill someone else would be the lowest point of my self-will, and there’s the whole of you in that. I am not you: I want the highest point, and will kill myself.

There were two, and suddenly there’s a third human being, a new spirit, whole, finished, such as doesn’t come from human hands; a new thought and a new love, it’s even frightening … And there’s nothing higher in the world!

There was perhaps more anger in Nikolai Vsevolodovich than in those two together, but this anger was cold, calm, and, if one may put it so, reasonable, and therefore the most repulsive and terrible that can be.

If you found out that you believe in God, you would believe; but since you don’t know yet that you believe in God, you don’t believe

You shouldn’t have offended him.” “And what should I have done?” “You should have killed him.” “You’re sorry I didn’t kill him?” “I’m not sorry about anything. I thought you really wanted to kill him. You don’t know what you’re seeking.” “I’m seeking a burden,” laughed Stavrogin.

You at least are not angry with me?” Stavrogin gave him his hand. “Not at all!” Kirillov turned back to shake hands with him. “If the burden is light for me because of my nature, then maybe the burden is heavier for you because of your nature. Nothing to be much ashamed of, only a little.

Now it is being suggested to us, through various strewn-about leaflets of foreign manufacture, that we close ranks and start groups with the sole purpose of universal destruction, under the pretext that however you try to cure the world, you’re not going to cure it, but by radically lopping off a hundred million heads,

And yet the trashiest people suddenly gained predominance and began loudly criticizing all that’s holy, whereas earlier they had not dared to open their mouths, and the foremost people, who until then had so happily kept the upper hand, suddenly began listening to them, and became silent themselves; and some even chuckled along in a most disgraceful way.

Our most solid minds are now marveling at themselves: how could they suddenly have gone so amiss then?

it’s very easy for Pyotr Stepanovich to live in the world, because he imagines a man and then lives with him the way he imagined him.

We are unable to live by our own labor.

More significantly, it was under Belinsky’s tutelage that Dostoevsky had gone from a lingering social Christianity to atheist materialism. “I have acquired the truth,” he wrote to Herzen in 1845, “and in the words God and religion I see darkness, obscurity, chains, and the knout.” This negative conversion out of love for suffering humanity was not an ideological affectation for Dostoevsky, it was the central crisis of his life and would inform all his later work.

Stepan Trofimovich’s view of the general movement was scornful in the highest degree; with him it all came down to his being forgotten and not needed by anyone.

Stavrogin is everything.

It was not you who ate the idea, but the idea that ate you,

Finally, the scene changes again, and a wild place appears, where a civilized young man wanders among the rocks picking and sucking at some wild herbs, and when a fairy asks him why he is sucking these herbs, he responds that he feels an overabundance of life in himself, is seeking oblivion, and finds it in the juice of these herbs, but that his greatest desire is to lose his reason as quickly as possible (a perhaps superfluous desire).

His selection emphasizes two things: the self-destruction of the swine, and the healing of the man. This, highly abbreviated, is the plot of Demons.

Here, in what many consider the darkest of his novels, Dostoevsky inscribes the fundamental freedom of Judeo-Christian revelation—the freedom to turn from evil, the freedom to repent. His vision is not Manichaean; he does not see evil as co-eternal with good. Evil cannot be the essence of any living person. The “possessed” can at any moment be rid of their demons, which are wicked but also false.

The assertion of human autonomy is finally a revolt against God; it is also the final lie, the mystification behind all the demystifying critiques of modern times. It was in this light that Dostoevsky saw not only the political movements of his day, but the ideas that nourished them—ideas that came a bit late to Russia, but developed there at an accelerated pace.

On the one hand, then, the demons of the title belong to the folkloric realm of spirits; they are devilish misleaders of men, tricksters, whose presence is deduced from the question: “We’ve lost our way, what shall we do?

It is the eschatological light of all the Gospel accounts of Christ’s miracles and healings, which are not supernatural or magical but prefigure the coming of the Kingdom of God. Luke’s account of the Gerasene demoniac is considerably longer than the passage Dostoevsky cites. His selection emphasizes two things: the self-destruction of the swine, and the healing of the man. This, highly abbreviated, is the plot of Demons.

the demons came out of the Russian man and entered into a herd of swine, i.e. into the Nechaevs … etc.

The “healing” of the sick man is, however, barely adumbrated in the novel; the intensity of the demonic paroxysm all but overshadows it; yet awakening does come in extremis to Stepan Trofimovich, whose end is the antithesis of Stavrogin’s, but equally exemplary

The demons, then, are ideas, that legion of isms that came to Russia from the West: idealism, rationalism, empiricism, materialism, utilitarianism, positivism, socialism, anarchism, nihilism, and, underlying them all, atheism. To which the Slavophils opposed their notions of the Russian earth, the Russian God, the Russian Christ, the “light from the East,” and so on.

It was not you who ate the idea, but the idea that ate you,” Pyotr Verkhovensky says to Kirillov