Idiot Dostoevsky Quotes

Beauty will save the world.

Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.

I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and we’re both unhappy, and we both suffer.

Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man.

A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.

There is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps the most important of your ideas.

I almost do not exist now and I know it; God knows what lives in me in place of me.

One man doesn't believe in god at all, while the other believes in him so thoroughly that he prays as he murders men!

In every idea of genius or in every new human idea, or, more simply still, in every serious human idea born in anyone's brain, there is something that cannot possibly be conveyed to others.

Pass us by, and forgive us our happiness

It wasn't the New World that mattered... Columbus died almost without seeing it; and not really knowing what he had discovered. It's life that matters, nothing but life — the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.

The prince says that the world will be saved by beauty! And I maintain that the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love.

God knows what is in me in place of me.

I think that if one is faced by inevitable destruction -- if a house is falling upon you, for instance -- one must feel a great longing to sit down, close one's eyes and wait, come what may...

I must add... my gratitude to you for the attention with which you have listened to me, for, from my numerous observations, our Liberals are never capable of letting anyone else have a conviction of his own without at once meeting their opponent with abuse or even something worse.

Such power!" Adelaida cried all at once, peering greedily at the portrait over her sister's shoulder. "Where? What power?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna asked sharply. "Such beauty has power," Adelaida said hotly. "You can overturn the world with such beauty.

To kill for murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands. Anyone murdered by brigands, whose throat is cut at night in a wood, or something of that sort, must surely hope to escape till the very last minute. There have been instances when a man has still hoped for escape, running or begging for mercy after his throat was cut. But in the other case all that last hope, which makes dying ten times as easy, is taken away for certain. There is the sentence, and the whole awful torture lies in the fact that there is certainly no escape, and there is no torture in the world more terrible.

76. David Hume – Treatise on Human Nature; Essays Moral and Political; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 77. Jean-Jacques Rousseau – On the Origin of Inequality; On the Political Economy; Emile – or, On Education, The Social Contract 78. Laurence Sterne – Tristram Shandy; A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy 79. Adam Smith – The Theory of Moral Sentiments; The Wealth of Nations 80. Immanuel Kant – Critique of Pure Reason; Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals; Critique of Practical Reason; The Science of Right; Critique of Judgment; Perpetual Peace 81. Edward Gibbon – The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Autobiography 82. James Boswell – Journal; Life of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D. 83. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier – Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry) 84. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison – Federalist Papers 85. Jeremy Bentham – Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; Theory of Fictions 86. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Faust; Poetry and Truth 87. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier – Analytical Theory of Heat 88. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – Phenomenology of Spirit; Philosophy of Right; Lectures on the Philosophy of History 89. William Wordsworth – Poems 90. Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Poems; Biographia Literaria 91. Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice; Emma 92. Carl von Clausewitz – On War 93. Stendhal – The Red and the Black; The Charterhouse of Parma; On Love 94. Lord Byron – Don Juan 95. Arthur Schopenhauer – Studies in Pessimism 96. Michael Faraday – Chemical History of a Candle; Experimental Researches in Electricity 97. Charles Lyell – Principles of Geology 98. Auguste Comte – The Positive Philosophy 99. Honoré de Balzac – Père Goriot; Eugenie Grandet 100. Ralph Waldo Emerson – Representative Men; Essays; Journal 101. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter 102. Alexis de Tocqueville – Democracy in America 103. John Stuart Mill – A System of Logic; On Liberty; Representative Government; Utilitarianism; The Subjection of Women; Autobiography 104. Charles Darwin – The Origin of Species; The Descent of Man; Autobiography 105. Charles Dickens – Pickwick Papers; David Copperfield; Hard Times 106. Claude Bernard – Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine 107. Henry David Thoreau – Civil Disobedience; Walden 108. Karl Marx – Capital; Communist Manifesto 109. George Eliot – Adam Bede; Middlemarch 110. Herman Melville – Moby-Dick; Billy Budd 111. Fyodor Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Brothers Karamazov 112. Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary; Three Stories 113. Henrik Ibsen – Plays 114. Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace; Anna Karenina; What is Art?; Twenty-Three Tales 115. Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Mysterious Stranger 116. William James – The Principles of Psychology; The Varieties of Religious Experience; Pragmatism; Essays in Radical Empiricism 117. Henry James – The American; The Ambassadors 118. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Beyond Good and Evil; The Genealogy of Morals;The Will to Power 119. Jules Henri Poincaré – Science and Hypothesis; Science and Method 120. Sigmund Freud – The Interpretation of Dreams; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis; Civilization and Its Discontents; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis 121. George Bernard Shaw – Plays and Prefaces

Beauty is very difficult to judge. I’m not ready for it yet. Beauty is a mystery.

Why did you come in to-night with your heads in the air? 'Make way, we are coming! Give us every right and don't you dare breathe a word before us. Pay us every sort of respect, such as no one's ever heard of, and we shall treat you worse than the lowest lackey!' They strive for justice, they stand on their rights, and yet they've slandered him like infidels in their article. We demand, we don't ask, and you will get no gratitude from us, because you are acting for the satisfaction of your own conscience! Queer sort of reasoning!... He has not borrowed money from you, he doesn't owe you anything, so what are you reckoning on, if not his gratitude? So how can you repudiate it? Lunatics! They regard society as savage and inhuman, because it cries shame on the seduced girl; but if you think society inhuman, you must think that the girl suffers from the censure of society, and if she does, how is it you expose her to society in the newspapers and expect her not to suffer? Lunatics! Vain creatures! They don't believe in God, they don't believe in Christ! Why, you are so eaten up with pride and vanity that you'll end by eating up one another, that's what I prophesy. Isn't that topsy-turvydom, isn't it infamy?

The meanest and most hateful thing about money is that it even gives one talent.

I repeat, crime is too common a refuge for such untalented, impatient and greedy nonentities

a handsome young man, with black hair and eyes, and a suspicion of beard and whiskers.

Yet my friend Natasha [Troubetskoia]† swears that Dostoevsky was a great liar and you could hardly find a Nastasia, an “idiot,” or a Stavrogin in Russia.

Vile as I am,” states one of the characters in Dostoevski’s The Idiot, “I don’t believe in the wagons that bring bread to humanity. For the wagons that bring bread to humanity, without any moral basis for conduct, may coldly exclude a considerable part of humanity from enjoying what is brought; so it has been already.

Is it true, prince, that you once declared that "beauty would save the world"? Great Heaven! The prince says that beauty saves the world! And I declare that he only has such playful ideas because he's in love! Gentlemen, the prince is in love. I guessed it the moment he came in. Don't blush, prince; you make me sorry for you. What beauty saves the world? Colia told me that you are a zealous Christian; is it so? Colia says you call yourself a Christian.' The prince regarded him attentively, but said nothing.

Then it happened. One night as the rain beat on the slanted kitchen roof a great spirit slipped forever into my life. I held his book in my hands and trembled as he spoke to me of man and the world, of love and wisdom, pain and guilt, and I knew I would never be the same. His name was Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky. He knew more of fathers and sons than any man in the world, and of brothers and sisters, priests and rogues, guilt and innocence. Dostoyevsky changed me. The Idiot, The Possessed, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler. He turned me inside out. I found I could breathe, could see invisible horizons. The hatred for my father melted. I loved my father, poor, suffering, haunted wretch. I loved my mother too, and all my family. It was time to become a man, to leave San Elmo and go out into the world. I wanted to think and feel like Dostoyevsky. I wanted to write. The week before I left town the draft board summoned me to Sacramento for my physical. I was glad to go. Someone other than myself could make my decisions. The army turned me down. I had asthma. Inflammation of the bronchial tubes. “That’s nothing. I’ve always had it.” “See your doctor.” I got the needed information from a medical book at the public library. Was asthma fatal? It could be. And so be it. Dostoyevsky had epilepsy, I had asthma. To write well a man must have a fatal ailment. It was the only way to deal with the presence of death.

Listen, Parfyon, a few moments ago you asked me a question, and this is my answer: the essence of religious feeling has nothing to do with any reasoning, or any crimes and misdemeanors or atheism; is is something entirely different and it will always be so; it is something our atheists will always overlook, and they will never talk about THAT. But the important thing is that you will notice it most clearly in a Russian heart, and that's the conclusion I've come to! This is one of the chief convictions I have acquired in our Russia. There's work to be done, Parfyon. Believe me, there's work to be done in our Russian world!

You know, it is beyond me that one can one can walk past a tree and not feel happy seeing it? How can one talk to a man and not feel happy loving him?... there are so many wonderful things at every step and turn that even the most disoriented person would find wonderful! Observe a child, observe the rising sun, observe the grass, the way it grows, look into the eyes that look back at you and love you

What was this festival? what was this grand, everlasting pageant to which there was no end, to which he had always, from his earliest childhood, been drawn and in which he could never take part?... Everything has its path, and everything knows its path, and with a song goes forth, and with a song returns. Only he knows nothing, and understands nothing, neither men nor sounds; he is outside it all, and an outcast.

To kill for murder is an immeasurably greater evil than the crime itself. Murder by legal process is immeasurably more dreadful than murder by a brigand. A man who is murdered by brigands is killed at night in a forest or somewhere else, and up to the last moment he still hopes that he will be saved. There have been instances when a man whose throat had already been cut, was still hoping, or running away or begging for his life to be spared. But here all this last hope, which makes it ten times easier to die, is taken away FOR CERTAIN; here you have been sentenced to death, and the whole terrible agony lies in the fact that you will most certainly not escape, and there is no agony greater than that. Take a soldier and put him in front of a cannon in battle and fire at him and he will still hope, but read the same soldier his death sentence FOR CERTAIN, and he will go mad or burst out crying. Who says that human nature is capable of bearing this without madness? Why this cruel, hideous, unnecessary, and useless mockery? Possibly there are men who have sentences of death read out to them and have been given time to go through this torture, and have then been told, You can go now, you've been reprieved. Such men could perhaps tell us. It was of agony like this and of such horror that Christ spoke. No, you can't treat a mean like that.

I dream of seeing, and seem to see clearly already, our future. It will come to pass that even the most corrupt of our rich will end by being ashamed of his riches before the poor, and the poor, seeing his humility, will understand and give way before him, will respond joyfully and kindly to his honourable shame.

The Idiot. I have read it once, and find that I don't remember the events of the book very well--or even all the principal characters. But mostly the 'portrait of a truly beautiful person' that dostoevsky supposedly set out to write in that book. And I remember how Myshkin seemed so simple when I began the book, but by the end, I realized how I didn't understand him at all. the things he did. Maybe when I read it again it will be different. But the plot of these dostoevsky books can hold such twists and turns for the first-time reader-- I guess that's b/c he was writing most of these books as serials that had to have cliffhangers and such. But I make marks in my books, mostly at parts where I see the author's philosophical points standing in the most stark relief. My copy of Moby Dick is positively full of these marks. The Idiot, I find has a few... Part 3, Section 5. The sickly Ippolit is reading from his 'Explanation' or whatever its called. He says his convictions are not tied to him being condemned to death. It's important for him to describe, of happiness: "you may be sure that Columbus was happy not when he had discovered America, but when he was discovering it." That it's the process of life--not the end or accomplished goals in it--that matter. Well. Easier said than lived! Part 3, Section 6. more of Ippolit talking--about a christian mindset. He references Jesus's parable of The Word as seeds that grow in men, couched in a description of how people are interrelated over time; its a picture of a multiplicity. Later in this section, he relates looking at a painting of Christ being taken down from the cross, at Rogozhin's house. The painting produced in him an intricate metaphor of despair over death "in the form of a huge machine of the most modern construction which, dull and insensible, has aimlessly clutched, crushed, and swallowed up a great priceless Being, a Being worth all nature and its laws, worth the whole earth, which was created perhaps solely for the sake of the advent of this Being." The way Ippolit's ideas are configured, here, reminds me of the writings of Gilles Deleuze. And the phrasing just sort of remidns me of the way everyone feels--many people feel crushed by the incomprehensible machine, in life. Many people feel martyred in their very minor ways. And it makes me think of the concept that a narrative religion like Christianity uniquely allows for a kind of socialized or externalized, shared experience of subjectivity. Like, we all know the story of this man--and it feels like our own stories at the same time. Part 4, Section 7. Myshkin's excitement (leading to a seizure) among the Epanchin's dignitary guests when he talks about what the nobility needs to become ("servants in order to be leaders"). I'm drawn to things like this because it's affirming, I guess, for me: "it really is true that we're absurd, that we're shallow, have bad habits, that we're bored, that we don't know how to look at things, that we can't understand; we're all like that." And of course he finds a way to make that into a good thing. which, it's pointed out by scholars, is very important to Dostoevsky philosophy--don't deny the earthly passions and problems in yourself, but accept them and incorporate them into your whole person. Me, I'm still working on that one.

Isn’t it possible simply to eat me, without demanding that I praise that which has eaten me?

There is no tenderness in you; there is only justice, and therefore, it is unjust.

We degrade God when we attribute our own ideas to Him, out of annoyance that we cannot fathom His ways.

as if it is enough simply to blubber out: ‘I know I am very guilty;’ you are to blame, and yet you persevere in evil doing.

It is better to be unhappy and know, than to happy and live as a fool.

Rest, dear dust, till the gladsome morning,’8

Lizaveta Prokofyevna was a hotheaded and passionate lady, so that suddenly and at once, without thinking long, she would sometimes raise all anchors and set out for the open sea without checking the weather.

he was then still counting on her love and thought he could seduce her mainly by comfort and luxury, knowing how easily the habits of luxury take root and how hard it is to give them up later, when luxury has gradually turned into necessity.

But the friend of humanity with shaky moral principles is the devourer of humanity, to say nothing of his conceit; for, wound the vanity of any one of these numerous friends of humanity, and he's ready to set fire to the world out of petty revenge..

There are some people about whom it is difficult to say anything which would describe them immediately and fully in their most typical and characteristic aspects; these are the people who are usually called "ordinary" and accounted as "the majority," and who actually do make up the great majority of society. In their novels and stories writers most often try to choose and present vividly and artistically social types which are extremely seldom encountered in real life, and which are nevertheless more real than real life itself. Podkolyosin, viewed as a type, in perhaps exaggerated, but he is hardly unknown. How many clever people having learned from Gogol about Podkolyosin at once discover that great numbers of their friends bear a terrific resemblance to Podkolyosin. They knew before Gogol that their friends were like Podkolyosin, except they did not know yet that that was their name... Nevertheless the question remains before us: what is the novelist to do with the absolutely "ordinary" people, and how can he present them to readers so that they are at all interesting? To leave them out of a story completely is not possible, because ordinary people are at every moment, by and large, the necessary links in the chain of human affairs; leaving them out, therefore, means to destroy credibility. To fill a novel entirely with types or, simply for the sake of interest, strange and unheard-of people, would be improbable and most likely not even interesting. In our opinion the writer must try to find interesting and informative touches even among commonplace people. When, for example, the very nature of certain ordinary persons consists precisely of their perpetual and unvarying ordinariness, or, better still, when in spite of their most strenuous efforts to life themselves out of the rut of ordinariness and routine, then such persons acquire a certain character of their own-the typical character of mediocrity which refuses to remain what it is and desires at all costs to become original and independent, without having the slightest capacity for independence.

That's what he says, he, and he knows it. 'You are going to perform an act of heroic virtue, and you don't believe in virtue; that's what tortures you and makes you angry, that's why you are so vindictive.' He said that to me about me and he knows what he says.

This soldier had been taken prisoner in some remote part of Asia, and was threatened with an immediate agonising death if he did not renounce Christianity and follow Islam. He refused to deny his faith, and was tortured, flayed alive, and died, praising and glorifying Christ.

In sowing your seed, in sowing your ‘charity,’ your good deed in whatever form it takes, you give away part of your person and receive into yourself part of another’s; you mutually commune in each other; a little more attention, and you will be rewarded with knowledge, with the most unexpected discoveries.

He had at most five minutes of life left. He said that those five minutes were an endless deadline, a colossal wealth. It seemed to him that he lived so many lives in those five minutes that he had no time to think about the final moment, and he even had to attend to different matters. He calculated the time necessary to say goodbye to his comrades and set aside a couple of minutes for that purpose. Then he allotted another two minutes to think about himself one last time and to look around one last time. After bidding farewell to his comrades, those two minutes he had reserved for thinking about himself arrived. He already knew in advance what he would think about: he wanted to imagine, as soon as possible and with utmost clarity, what he could become. At that moment, he existed and lived, and three minutes later he would be someone or something, but who? And where? He believed he would find the answer to all of that in those two minutes! Oh, if only he wouldn't die! If life could be restored to him! What eternity it would be! And all for himself! In that case, he would turn every minute into a whole century, without losing a single one, he would savor each moment and not waste anything! He said that this idea eventually degenerated into such rage that he wished to be executed as soon as possible.

Rachel Ries is a wonderful singer/performer/songwriter who writes her music with a literary and poetic style. In an interview with Amanda Miller for Rumpus Magazine Rachel Ries listed some of her literary influences. You can listen to her perform at this site too, if you've never heard her before. Here is her list in the order she gave them: Al Kennedy – Everything You Need Umberto Eco – Foucault’s Pendulum China Miéville – Perdido Street Station Everything by Tolkien Jeannette Winterson Dostoevsky – The Idiot John Steinbeck – East of Eden Willa Cather – Song of the Lark Diana Gabaldon – Anything Outlander Neil Gaiman – American Gods Victor Hugo – Les Miserables Marilynne Robinson – Housekeeping Justin Cronin – The Passage David Wroblewski - The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Once upon a time there was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire. So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God; 'She once pulled up an onion in her garden,' said he, 'and gave it to a beggar woman.' And God answered: 'You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.' The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. 'Come,' said he, 'catch hold and I'll pull you out.' he began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her. But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. 'I'm to be pulled out, not you. It's my onion, not yours.' As soon as she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away.

Just as his sentimentalism is profoundly middle-class and plebeian, but his irrationalism reactionary, so his moral philosophy also contains an inner contradiction: on the one hand, it is saturated with strongly plebeian characteristics, but on the other, it contains the germ of a new aristocratism. The concept of the ‘beautiful soul’ presupposes the complete dissolution of kalo-kagathia and implies the perfect spiritualization of all human values, but it also implies an application of aesthetic criteria to morality and is bound up with the view that moral values are the gift of nature. It means the recognition of a nobility of soul to which everyone has a right by nature, but in which the place of irrational birthrights is taken by an equally irrational quality of moral genius. The way of Rousseau’s ‘spiritual beauty’ leads, on the one hand, to characters like Dostoevsky’s Myshkin, who is a saint in the guise of an epilectic and an idiot, on the other, to the ideal of individual moral perfection which knows no social responsibility and does not aspire to be socially useful. Goethe, the Olympian, who thinks of nothing but his own spiritual perfection, is a disciple of Rousseau just as much as the young freethinker who wrote Werther.

And what are you thinking about now?' 'About how you get up from your place, go past me, and I look at you and I watch you; your dress rustles, and my heart sinks, and if you leave the room, I remember every little word you've said, and in what voice, and what it was; and this whole night I wasn't thinking about anything, but I kept listening to how you breathed in your sleep, and how you stirred a couple of times . . .

All of the Western nations have been caught in a lie, the lie of their pretended humanism. This means that their history has no moral justification, and that the West has no moral authority. "Vile as I am," states one of the characters in Dostoevsky's The Idiot, "I don't believe in the wagons that bring bread to humanity. For the wagons that bring bread to humanity, may coldly exclude a considerable part of humanity from enjoying what is brought.

And meanwhile, even in spite of all my desire, I could never imagine to myself that there is no future life and no providence. Most likely there is all that, but we don't understand anything about the future life and its laws. But if it is so difficult and even completely impossible to understand it, can it be that I will have to answer for being unable to comprehend the unknowable? True, they say, and the prince, of course, along with them, that it is here that obedience is necessary, that one must obey without reasoning, out of sheer good behavior, and that I am bound to be rewarded for my meekness in the other world. We abase providence too much by ascribing our own notions to it, being vexed that we can't understand it. But, again, if it's impossible to understand it, then, I repeat, it is hard to have to answer for something it is not given to man to understand. And if so, how are they going to judge me for being unable to understand the true will and laws of providence? No, we'd better leave religion alone.

Dreadful crimes? But I can assure you that crimes just as dreadful, and probably more horrible, have occurred before our times, and at all times, and not only here in Russia, but everywhere else as well. And in my opinion it is not at all likely that such murders will cease to occur for a very long time to come. The only difference is that in former times there was less publicity, while now everyone talks and writes freely about such things — which fact gives the impression that such crimes have only now sprung into existence.

and—and is it really impossible to be unhappy? Oh, what are my grief and my trouble, if I am able to be happy? You know, I don’t understand how it’s possible to pass by a tree and not be happy to see it. To talk with a man and not be happy that you love him! Oh, I only don’t know how to say it... but there are so many things at every step that are so beautiful, that even the most confused person finds beautiful. Look at a child, look at God’s sunrise, look at the grass growing, look into the eyes that are looking at you and love you...

Mas, não obstante, eu acrescento que em qualquer pensamento genial ou no novo pensamento humano, ou simplesmente até em qualquer pensamento humano sério, que medra da cabeça de alguém, sempre resta algo que de maneira nenhuma se pode transmitir a outras pessoas, embora voc6e tenha garatujado volumes inteiros e passado trinta e cinco anos interpretando o seu pensamento; sempre restará algo que de maneira alguma desejará sair do seu crânio e permanecerá com você para todo o sempre; e assim você acaba morrendo sem ter transmitido a ninguém talvez o mais importante da sua idéia.

One of them was a young fellow of about twenty-seven, not tall, with black curling hair, and small, grey, fiery eyes. His nose was broad and flat, and he had high cheek bones; his thin lips were constantly compressed into an impudent, ironical—it might almost be called a malicious—smile; but his forehead was high and well formed, and atoned for a good deal of the ugliness of the lower part of his face. A special feature of this physiognomy was its death-like pallor, which gave to the whole man an indescribably emaciated appearance in spite of his hard look, and at the same time a sort of passionate and suffering expression which did not harmonize with his impudent, sarcastic smile and keen, self-satisfied bearing. He wore a large fur—or rather astrachan—overcoat, which had kept him warm all night, while his neighbour had been obliged to bear the full severity of a Russian November night entirely unprepared. His wide sleeveless mantle with a large cape to it—the sort of cloak one sees upon travellers during the winter months in Switzerland or North Italy—was by no means adapted to the long cold journey through Russia, from Eydkuhnen to St. Petersburg.

The thing about Dostoevsky's characters is that they are alive. By which I don't just mean that they're successfully realized or developed or "rounded". The best of them live inside us, forever, once we've met them. Recall the proud and pathetic Raskolnikov, the naive Devushkin, the beautiful and damned Nastasya of The Idiot, the fawning Lebyedev and spiderish Ippolit of the same novel; C&P's ingenious maverick detective Porfiry Petrovich (without whom there would probably be no commercial crime fiction w/ eccentrically brilliant cops); Marmeladov, the hideous and pitiful sot; or the vain and noble roulette addict Aleksey Ivanovich of The Gambler; the gold-hearted prostitutes Sonya and Liza; the cynically innocent Aglaia; or the unbelievably repellent Smerdyakov, that living engine of slimy resentment in whom I personally see parts of myself I can barely stand to look at; or the idealized and all too-human Myshkin and Alyosha, the doomed human Christ and triumphant child-pilgrim, respectively. These and so many other FMD creatures are alive-retain what Frank calls their "immense vitality"-not because they're just skillfully drawn types or facets of human beings but because, acting withing plausible and morally compelling plots, they dramatize the profoundest parts of all humans, the parts most conflicted, most serious-the ones with the most at stake. Plus, without ever ceasing to be 3-D individuals, Dostoevsky's characters manage to embody whole ideologies and philosophies of life: Raskolnikov the rational egoism of the 1860's intelligentsia, Myshkin mystical Christian love, the Underground Man the influence of European positivism on the Russian character, Ippolit the individual will raging against death's inevitability, Aleksey the perversion of Slavophilic pride in the face of European decadence, and so on and so forth....

Haven't I dreamed of you myself? You are right, I dreamed of you long ago, when I lived five years all alone in his country home. I used to think and dream, think and dream, and I was always imagining someone like you, kind, good and honest, and so stupid that he would come forward all of a sudden and say, "You are not to blame, Nastasya Filippovna, and I adore you.” I used to dream like that, till I nearly went out of my mind... And then this man would come, stay two months in the year, bringing shame, dishonour, corruption, degradation, and go away. So that a thousand times I wanted to fling myself into the pond, but I was a poor creature, I hadn't the courage...

I hate you, Gavrila Ardalionovitch, solely (this may seem curious to you, but I repeat) solely because you are the type, and incarnation, and head, and crown of the most impudent, the most self-satisfied, the most detestable form of commonplaceness. You are routine of the routine, you have no chance of ever fathering the pettiest idea of your own. “And yet you are as jealous and conceited as you can possibly be; you consider yourself a great genius, of this you are persuaded, although there are dark moments of doubt and rage, when even this fact seems uncertain; there are points of darkness on your horizon, and of this I am glad; in the first place you will never gain a certain much-desired end, I mean a certain person.

...epilepsijos metu būdavo viena stadija prieš pat priepuolį (jeigu tik priepuolis ištikdavo dar su sąmone), kada staiga, užėjus liūdesiui, dvasinei tamsai, slogumui, protarpiais tarytum įsiliepsnodavo jo smegenyse ir nepaprastai įsitempdavo iš karto visos jo gyvybinės galios. Gyvybės, sąmoningumo pojūtis beveik dešimteriopai padidėdavo tomis akimirkomis, kurios praeidavo kaip žaibas. Protas, širdis nutviksdavo nepaprasta šviesa; visas jo susijaudinimas, visos dvejonės, visas nerimas tarytum nuščiūdavo iš karto, ištirpdavo kažin kokioje aukštesnėje rimtyje, sklidinoje giedro, harmoningo džiaugsmo ir vilties, sklidinoje išminties bei galutinės priežasties. Bet tokie momentai, tie pragiedruliai tik pranašaudavo tą galutinę sekundę (niekuomet ne ilgiau nei vieną sekundę), kurią prasidėdavo pats priepuolis.

The thing about Dostoevsky's characters is that they are alive. By which I don't just mean that they're successfully realized or developed or "rounded". The best of them live inside us, forever, once we've met them. Recall the proud and pathetic Raskolnikov, the naive Devushkin, the beautiful and damned Nastasya of The Idiot, the fawning Lebyedev and spiderish Ippolit of the same novel; C&P's ingenious maverick detective Porfiry Petrovich (without whom there would probably be no commercial crime fiction w/ eccentrically brilliant cops); Marmeladov, the hideous and pitiful sot; or the vain and noble roulette addict Aleksey Ivanovich of The Gambler; the gold-hearted prostitutes Sonya and Liza; the cynically innocent Aglaia; or the unbelievably repellent Smerdyakov, that living engine of slimy resentment in whom I personally see parts of myself I can barely stand to look at; or the idealized and all too-human Myshkin and Alyosha, the doomed human Christ and triumphant child-pilgrim, respectively. These and so many other FMD creatures are alive-retain what Frank calls their "immense vitality"-not because they're just skillfully drawn types or facets of human beings but because, acting within plausible and morally compelling plots, they dramatize the profoundest parts of all humans, the parts most conflicted, most serious-the ones with the most at stake. Plus, without ever ceasing to be 3-D individuals, Dostoevsky's characters manage to embody whole ideologies and philosophies of life: Raskolnikov the rational egoism of the 1860's intelligentsia, Myshkin mystical Christian love, the Underground Man the influence of European positivism on the Russian character, Ippolit the individual will raging against death's inevitability, Aleksey the perversion of Slavophilic pride in the face of European decadence, and so on and so forth....

Que significava aquele imenso e eterno espetáculo, sempre renovado e que o atraíra sempre, desde a mais longínqua infância, mas no qual jamais pudera tomar parte? Cada manhã o mesmo sol deslumbrante! Todos os dias o mesmo arco-íris como um diadema sobre a cascata! Todas as tardes a geleira fulgurando envolta em púrpura ao fundo do horizonte! "Cada diminuta mosca que zunia ao redor dele no ardente raio do sol tinha a sua parte no coro, sabia o seu lugar, gostava e era feliz!" Cada folha de relva cresce e é feliz. Tudo tem sua trajetória, cada coisa sabe que possui um itinerário e por ele adiante envereda por entre hosanas! Não há quem não saia de manhã com uma canção e não volte ao crepúsculo, cantando... Só ele não sabe nada, não compreende nada, nem homens, nem sons. Não comparticipa de nada, é um banido. Oh! Naturalmente não dissera servindo-se de palavras, sua interrogação tendo sido apenas mental. Era um sofrimento mudo de quem não atina com um enigma; mas agora lhe parecia que havia dito tudo aquilo com as mesmas palavras de Ippolít, a ponto de a frase relativa à mosca parecer sua, Ippolít o havendo plagiado, tomando-a das suas lágrimas e dos pensamentos de então. Tamanha certeza teve disso que enquanto refletia, o seu coração acelerava o ritmo.

O que há é que estou resolvido a sumir. Eu sei que sou um desfavorecido da natureza. Estive doente durante 24 anos, desde o meu nascimento até completar 24 anos. Deve tomar tudo quanto eu digo agora como coisa de um homem doente. Vou-me embora, imediatamente, imediatamente. Pode ficar certa disso. Não me sinto envergonhado, não, pois seria estranho que eu estivesse envergonhado disso, não seria? Mas estou deslocado na sociedade… Falo, não por vaidade ferida!… Estive refletindo durante estes três dias e achei cá comigo que lhe devia explicar certas coisas sinceramente e de modo bem digno para com a senhora, na primeira oportunidade que eu tivesse. Há ideias, grandes ideias, sobre as quais eu não devo começar a falar, porque na certa faria todo o mundo rir. O Príncipe Chtch… ainda agora me avisou sobre tal coisa. Minha atitude não é conveniente. Não tenho nenhum senso de proporção. Minhas palavras são incoerentes, não se enquadrando no assunto; e isso é uma degradação para tais ideias. Portanto, não tenho nenhum direito!… Além disso, sou sensível morbidamente… Estou mais do que certo de que ninguém, aqui nesta casa, feriria meus sentimentos e que sou mais querido aqui do que mereço. Mas eu sei (e sei ao certo) que vinte anos de doença devem deixar traços, e que por conseguinte é impossível a qualquer pessoa deixar de rir de mim… às vezes… Não é assim, não é mesmo?

Two weeks ago my mountain of mail delivered forth a pipsqueak mouse of a letter from a well-known publishing house that wanted to reprint my story “The Fog Horn” in a high school reader. In my story, I had described a lighthouse as hav­ing, late at night, an illumination coming from it that was a “God-Light.” Looking up at it from the view-point of any sea-creature one would have felt that one was in “the Presence.” The editors had deleted “God-Light” and “in the Presence.” Some five years back, the editors of yet another anthology for school readers put together a volume with some 400 (count ‘em) short stories in it. How do you cram 400 short stories by Twain, Irving, Poe, Maupassant and Bierce into one book? Simplicity itself. Skin, debone, demarrow, scarify, melt, render down and destroy. Every adjective that counted, every verb that moved, every metaphor that weighed more than a mosquito—out! Every simile that would have made a sub-moron’s mouth twitch—gone! Any aside that explained the two-bit philosophy of a first-rate writer—lost! Every story, slenderized, starved, bluepenciled, leeched and bled white, resembled every other story. Twain read like Poe read like Shakespeare read like Dostoevsky read like—in the finale—Edgar Guest. Every word of more than three syllables had been ra­zored. Every image that demanded so much as one instant’s attention—shot dead. Do you begin to get the damned and incredible picture? How did I react to all of the above? By “firing” the whole lot. By sending rejection slips to each and every one. By ticketing the assembly of idiots to the far reaches of hell.

Парфен, ты давеча спросил меня, вот мой ответ: сущность религиозного чувства ни под какие рассуждения, ни под какие проступки и преступления и ни под какие атеизмы не подходит; тут что-то не то, и вечно будет не то; тут что-то такое, обо что вечно будут скользить атеизмы и вечно будут не про то говорить. Но главное то, что всего яснее и скорее на русском сердце это заметишь, и вот мое заключение! Это одно из самых первых моих убеждений, которые я из нашей России выношу.

En cierta ocasión subió a las montañas; era un hermoso día soleado, y estuvo paseando mucho rato, con una idea que lo atormentaba, pero que no llegaba a tomar forma. Delante de él veía el cielo brillante, a sus pies un lago y alrededor el horizonte, luminoso e inabarcable, que parecía no tener fin. Estuvo contemplándolo mucho tiempo, sin dejar de sufrir. Se acordó de que había extendido los brazos en ese azul radiante e infinito, y había llorado. Había sufrido sintiéndose excluido de todo eso. De ese banquete, de esa celebración colosal, perpetua, incesante, a la que se sentía llamado hacía mucho, desde siempre, desde la infancia, y a la que no conseguía acceder. Cada mañana amanecía el mismo sol radiante; cada mañana se veía un arco iris en la cascada; cada tarde, a lo lejos, en el extremo del cielo, la cumbre más alta, cubierta de nieve, ardía en una llama púrpura; cada «pequeña mosca, que zumbaba a su alrededor en un cálido rayo de sol, participaba en todo ese coro: sabía cuál era su sitio, lo amaba y era feliz»; ¡cada brizna de hierba crecía y era feliz! Y todos los seres seguían su camino, todos conocían cuál era su camino, partían con un canto y llegaban con un canto; él era el único que no sabía nada, que no entendía nada, ni a la gente, ni los sonidos, era ajeno a todo, un aborto.

It's better to be unhappy, but to know, than to be happy and live . . . as a fool.

Her dark eyes flashed, two red spots appeared on her pale cheeks. The sullen and squeamish tinge on some of her guests' physiognomies perhaps inflamed her mocking desire still more; perhaps she precisely liked thee cynicism and cruelty of the idea.

He was only speaking from confused memory of old slanders. But as soon as he had uttered his foolish tirade, he felt he had been talking absurd nonsense, and at once longed to prove to his audience, and above all to himself, that he had not been talking nonsense. And, though he knew perfectly well that with each word he would be adding more and more absurdity, he could not restrain himself, and plunged forward blindly.

This is my happiest day. I am going to the Lord.' 'Yes,' cry the pastors and the judges and philanthropic ladies. 'This is the happiest day of your life, for you are going to the Lord!' They all walk or drive to the scaffold in procession behind the prison van. At the scaffold they call to Richard: 'Die, brother, die in the Lord, for even thou hast found grace!' And so, covered with his brothers' kisses, Richard is dragged on to the scaffold, and led to the guillotine. And they chopped off his head in brotherly fashion, because he had found grace.

His words seemed certainly queer, but God only could tell what was hidden in those words, and were not worse words and acts commonly seen in those who have sacrificed their intellects for the glory of God?

His whole theory is a fraud! Humanity will find in itself the power to live for virtue even without believing in immortality. It will find it in love for freedom, for equality, for fraternity.

I did have an idea of beginning a new life with that money in Moscow or, better still, abroad. I did dream of it, chiefly because 'all things are lawful.' That was quite right what you taught me, for you talked a lot to me about that. For if there's no everlasting God, there's no such thing as virtue, and there's no need of it. You were right there. So that's how I looked at it.

It's God that's worrying me. That's the only thing that's worrying me. What if He doesn't exist? What if Rakitin's right- that it's an idea made up by men? Then if He doesn't exist, man is the chief of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only

At some thoughts one stands perplexed, especially at the sight of men's sin, and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that once for all, you may subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvellously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.

I am sorry, friends and brothers, that I cannot express this clearly. But woe to those who have slain themselves on earth, woe to the suicides! I believe that there can be none more miserable than they. They tell us that it is a sin to pray for them and outwardly the Church, as it were, renounces them, but in my secret heart I believe that we may pray even for them.

yet to the very end he persisted in hoping that he would get that three thousand, that the money would somehow come to him of itself, as though it might drop from heaven. That is just how it is with people who, like Dmitri, have never had anything to do with money, except to squander what has come to them by inheritance without any effort of their own, and have no notion how money is obtained.

It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact. Even if he admits it, he admits it as a fact of nature till then unrecognised by him. Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith. If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also.

Razmišljaše, između ostalog, o tome da je u njegovom epileptičnom stanju postojao jedan stupanj već skoro pred samim napadom (ako bi ga dobijao na javi), kada bi, usred neke tuge, duševnog mraka, pritiska, njegov mozak u trenucima najednom čisto planuo, pa bi se neobično jako naprezale sve njegove životne snage. Osećanje života, samosvesti, skoro bi se udesetostručilo u tim trenucima, koji bi trajali koliko munja. Um i srce bi mu se obasjavali neobičnom svetlošću: sve sumnje njegove, sva bespokojstva, čisto bi se odjednom smirili, prelazli bi u neko najviše spokojstvo puno jasne, harmonične radosti i nade, ispunjeno razumom i shvatanjem najdubljih uzroka.

People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us.

And what follows from this right of multiplication of desires? In the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; in the poor, envy and murder; for they have been given rights, but have not been shown the means of satisfying their wants.

Interpreting freedom as the multiplication and rapid satisfaction of desires, men distort their own nature, for many senseless and foolish desires and habits and ridiculous fancies are fostered in them. They live only for mutual envy, for luxury and ostentation. To have dinners visits, carriages, rank, and slaves to wait on one is looked upon as a necessity, for which life, honour and human feeling are sacrificed, and men even commit suicide if they are unable to satisfy it.

In the sphere of actual life, which has, indeed, its own rights, but also lays upon us great duties and obligations, in that sphere, if we want to be humane- Christian, in fact- we must, or ought to, act only upon convictions justified by reason and experience, which have been passed through the crucible of analysis; in a word, we must act rationally, and not as though in dream and delirium, that we may not do harm, that we may not ill-treat and ruin a man. Then it will be real Christian work, not only mystic, but rational and philanthropic....

torpid

sagacious

As to age, General Epanchin was in the very prime of life; that is, about fifty-five years of age,—the flowering time of existence, when real enjoyment of life begins.

I used to become very restless. I was continually thinking of the life I would lead. I wanted to know what life had in store for me. I was particularly restless at some moments. You know there are such moments, especially in solitude. There was a small waterfall there; it fell from a height on the mountain, such a tiny thread, almost perpendicular—foaming, white and splashing. Though it fell from a great height it didn’t seem so high; it was the third of a mile away, but it only looked about fifty paces. I used to like listening to the sound of it at night. At such moments I was sometimes overcome with great restlessness; sometimes too at midday I wandered on the mountains, and stood alone halfway up a mountain surrounded by great ancient resinous pine trees; on the crest of the rock an old medieval castle in ruins; our little village far, far below, scarcely visible; bright sunshine, blue sky, and the terrible stillness. At such times I felt something was drawing me away, and I kept fancying that in walked straight on, far, far away and reached that line where sky and earth meet, there I should find the key to the mystery, there I should see a new life a thousand times richer and more turbulent than ours. I dreamed of some great town like Naples, full of palaces, noise, roar, life. And I dreamed of all sorts of things, indeed. But afterwards I fancied one might find a wealth of life even in prison.

Fetch a soldier and stand him right in front of a cannon during a battle and fire at him, he’ll go on hoping; but read out a certain death sentence to that same soldier and he’ll go off his head or burst into tears.

over him, seemed to be living on the honey of his words and in the breath of his nostrils, catching at every syllable as though it were a pearl of great price.

Sometimes I went and climbed the mountain and stood there in the midst of the solitude and the fir trees, all alone in the silence, with our little village in the distance, and the sky so blue, and the sun so bright, and an old ruined castle in the distance. I used to watch the line where earth and sky met, and long to go and seek there for some great city where life should be grander and newer than our own—and then it struck me that life may be grand enough even in a prison.

What matters is life, nothing but life – its revelation, constant and eternal, while the discovery matters not at all!

Besides, you need not mind about lecturing us; you have nothing to boast of. With your quietism, one could live happily for a hundred years at least. One might show you the execution of a felon, or show you one’s little finger. You could draw a moral from either, and be quite satisfied. That sort of existence is easy enough.

Everything has its path, and everything knows its path, and with a song goes forth, and with a song returns. Only he knows nothing, and understands nothing, neither men nor sounds; he is outside it all, and an outcast.

The charm of elegant manners, of simplicity, and of apparent frankness was almost magical. It could never have entered his head that all this simple frankness and nobility, wit, and refined personal dignity was perhaps only an exquisite artistic veneer. The majority of the guests, in spite of their prepossessing exterior, were rather empty-headed people, who were themselves unaware, however, that much of their superiority was mere veneer, for which they were not responsible indeed, as they had adopted it unconsciously and by inheritance.

I am a fool with a heart and no sense, and you are a fool with sense and no heart, and so we are both unhappy and miserable.

If it all has really been done deliberately and not idiotically, if I really had a certain and definite object, how is it I did not even glance into the purse and don’t know what I had there, for which I have undergone these agonies, and have deliberately undertaken this base, filthy degrading business? And here I wanted at once to throw into the water the purse together with all the things which I had not seen either... how’s that?

When I have money, I shall become a highly original man. What's most low and hateful about money is that even talent can be bought with it, and will be, till the end of the world.

As I was always a gloomy, morose sort of individual, my friends easily forgot me; of course, they would have forgotten me all the same, without that excuse.

he seemed to have just reached the peroration of