The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

To kill for murder is an immeasurably greater evil than the crime itself. Murder by judicial sentence is immeasurably more horrible than murder committed by a bandit.

So affectionate was the prince’s gaze at that moment, his smile so devoid of even the slightest nuance of concealed hostility, that the general suddenly paused and saw his guest, as it were, in a different light; the entire change in his expression took place in a single instant.

I think, we are very different… in many ways, and cannot perhaps have many points in common, but you know, I don’t place much faith in that last idea, for it very often merely seems that there are no points in common, while in reality there are lots… it’s because people are lazy that they sort themselves into categories, and therefore can’t find anything…

he didn’t live like that at all, and wasted far too many minutes.’ ‘Well then, there’s your proof, that means it’s impossible to live “counting each minute”. For some reason, it’s impossible.’ ‘Yes, for some reason it’s impossible,’ the prince repeated. ‘That’s what I thought, too… And yet somehow I don’t believe it…’

The man whose life was saved may temporarily have had a greater insight into the world, but Myshkin wisely observes that such realizations are difficult to actually remember and sustain over a longer period of time. Indeed, this is a rather universal flaw in human nature, and can be used to explain why people do not have as much moral wisdom as they perhaps ought to.

‘I mean, I myself know that I have lived less than others and have less understanding of life. It’s possible that I sometimes talk very strangely…’

Whether one showed you an execution or a little finger, you would extract an equally edifying thought from both of them, and would still be content. That’s the way to get on in life.’

Nothing should be hidden from children on the pretext that they’re too young and it’s too soon for them to know. What a sad and unhappy idea! And how well children themselves notice that their fathers consider them too young and devoid of comprehension, while in fact they comprehend everything. Adults don’t realize that even in the most difficult matter a child can give extremely useful advice.

knowing how easily the habits of luxury are acquired and how difficult it is later to give them up, when luxury gradually turns into necessity.

Farewell, Prince, it’s the first time I’ve ever seen a human being!

“I’ll marry you, Parfyon Semyonych,” she said, “and not because I’m afraid of you but because I have to go to my ruin anyway.

I bumped into a peasant woman with a newborn baby. The woman was still young, her baby would be about six weeks old. The baby smiled at her, by the look of it, for the first time since its birth. I looked, and all of a sudden, very devoutly she crossed herself. “Why are you doing that, young lady?” I asked. (For I was always asking questions in those days.) “Well,” she said, “just as a mother rejoices when she notices the first smile from her baby, so God rejoices every time he looks down from heaven and sees a sinner kneeling before him and praying with all his heart.” That was what the woman told me, almost in those very same words – such a profound, such a subtle and truly religious thought, a thought in which the whole essence of Christianity was instantly expressed: the whole concept of God as our father and of God’s rejoicing in man, like the rejoicing of a father in his child – the principal idea of Christ!

the essence of religious feeling has nothing to do with any reasoning, or misdemeanours, or crimes, or atheism; it’s something different, and it will always be different; it’s not that, it’s something the atheists will always avoid talking about, as they’ll always be talking about something else.

‘What does it matter if it’s an illness, then?’ he decided, at last, ‘what does it matter that it’s an abnormal tension, if the result itself, if the moment of sensation, recalled and examined in a condition of health, turns out to be the highest degree of harmony and beauty, yields a hitherto unheard-of and undreamed-of sense of completeness, proportion, reconciliation and an ecstatic, prayerful fusion with the highest synthesis of life?’

Recently Lizaveta Prokofyevna had begun to consider herself and her ‘unfortunate character’ to blame for everything – which made her sufferings even greater. She constantly referred to herself as a ‘stupid, indecent eccentric’, and suffered agonies of suspicion, was forever at a loss, unable to see a solution to the most ordinary conflicts, and was forever exaggerating all misfortunes.

But a certain dullness of mind seems to be an almost indispensable quality if not of every public figure, then at least of every serious accumulator of money.

If, loving a woman more than anything in the world, or anticipating the possibility of such a love, one were suddenly to see her on a chain, behind an iron grille, under the warder’s stick – such an impression would be somewhat similar to what the prince felt now.

Now there is the solution! So there must have been something more powerful than stakes and bonfires, more powerful even than the habit of twenty years! There must have been an idea more powerful than all the disasters, crop failures, tortures, plagues, leprosy and all the hell that mankind would not have been able to endure without that one idea that bound and directed the heart and fructified the springs of life! Show me anything resembling such a power in our age of seaminess and railways… what I ought to say is steam engines and railways, but I say seaminess and railways, for I am drunk but tell the truth! Show me an idea that binds the mankind of today with even half the power there was in those centuries. And then you have the effrontery to tell me that the springs of life have not been weakened, been polluted under this “star”, this net that has entangled human beings. And do not try to intimidate me with your prosperity, your wealth, the in-frequency of famine and the swiftness of the paths of communication! The wealth is greater, but the power is less; there is no binding idea left; everything has grown soft, everything has stewed to mush! We have all stewed to mush, all, all of us!…

Lebedev’s slip between “the age of steam and railways” and “the age of crime and railways” is very revealing. It indicates that, contrary to the idea that modernization brings greater peace and prosperity, it in fact might cause an increase in corruption, chaos, and crime.

I went out, and I really liked that, liked it at the time, even at the very moment he was showing me out; but for a long time afterwards his words produced a painful effect on me, a strange, contemptuous pity for him, which I did not want to feel at all.

On saying goodbye to me, he fervently shook my hand and asked to be allowed to visit me. I replied to him that if he came to see me as a “comforter” (because even if he said nothing, he would still come as a comforter, I explained that to him), then by that very fact he would remind me of death even more each time he came.

Were I in any way equal to you, you might be insulted by such insolence; but who am I, and who are you? We are two opposites, and I am so much out of your rank that I could not possibly insult you, even if I wanted to.’

‘If I’m to act like a villain, then I should act like a villain,’ he kept repeating to himself every day with the same self-satisfaction, but also with a certain amount of fear: ‘If I’m to act like a villain, then I really might as well take it to the limit,’ he kept encouraging himself. ‘In such cases the routine, run-of-the-mill fellow gets cold feet,

knowing you are ordinary but wanting to be special is the worst possible position to be in, because it affords neither the bliss of ignorance nor the satisfaction of embracing an unexceptional life..

Let us not forget that the causes of human actions are usually infinitely more complex and more various than we are in the habit of explaining them afterwards, and are seldom clearly outlined. Sometimes it is best for the narrator to confine himself to a simple exposition of events.

A man may lie, if you will, from simple friendship, in order to afford enjoyment to his partner in conversation; but if disrespect shows through, if precisely by such disrespect, perhaps, the intention is to show that the friendship is a burden, then all that’s left to a decent man is to turn away and end the friendship, thus showing the insulter his proper place.’

He even wanted to say that he was unworthy of being asked for forgiveness. Who knows, perhaps he had even noticed the significance of the words about ‘an absurdity that cannot, of course, have the slightest consequence’, but, like the strange man he was, even rejoiced, perhaps, in those words.

‘You know,’ Aglaya told him once, interrupting the newspaper, ‘I’ve noticed that you’re awfully ill-informed; you don’t know anything properly, if one asks you for information: you don’t know who it was, what year it happened in, or under the terms of what treaty. you’re quite pathetic’ ‘I told you, I’m not very educated,’ replied the prince.

‘You know, I’m sorry that you repudiate that notebook, Ippolit, what you wrote in it is sincere, and, you know, even its most ridiculous aspects (Ippolit frowned intensely) are redeemed by suffering, for to confess to them also involved suffering and… perhaps, great courage. The thought that moved you certainly had a noble foundation, I see that more and more clearly, I swear to you. I’m not judging you, I’m telling you this in order to express my opinion, and I’m sorry I kept silent that evening…’ Ippolit flushed. The thought flickered through his mind that the prince was dissembling and trying to catch him out; but studying the prince’s face more closely, he could not help believing in his sincerity; his own face cleared.

I bet you’ll start talking about some “topic”, something serious, learned and exalted, won’t you? How… proper that will be!’ ‘I think that would be stupid… if it wasn’t appropriate.’ ‘Listen, once and for all,’ Aglaya broke down, at last. ‘If you start talking about anything like the death penalty, or the economic condition of Russia, or “beauty saving the world”, then… I shall be delighted and laugh a great deal, but… I warn you now: never show yourself to my gaze again! Do you hear? I’m serious! This time I really am serious!’

Atheism merely preaches zero, but Catholicism goes further: it preaches a distorted Christ, slandered and desecrated by it, the opposite of Christ! It preaches the Antichrist, I swear to you, I assure you! That is my personal and long-established conviction, and it has been a source of torment to me… Roman Catholicism believes that without universal state power the Church will not endure upon earth, and cries: ‘Non possumus!’2 In my view, Roman Catholicism is not even a faith, but is decidedly a continuation of the Western Roman Empire, and in it everything, beginning with faith, is subordinated to that idea. The Pope seized the earth, an earthly throne, and took up the sword; ever since then it has all gone like that, except that to the sword they’ve added lies, slyness, deception, fanaticism, superstition and evil-doing, and played with the people’s most sacred, truthful, simple, fiery emotions, exchanging everything, everything for money, for base, earthly power. And isn’t that the teaching of the Antichrist?

I’m always afraid that my ridiculous appearance will compromise my thoughts and the main idea of what I’m trying to say. I don’t have the right gestures. I always make the gesture that has the opposite meaning to what I’m saying, and that makes people laugh, and humiliates my idea. I also have no sense of proportion, and that’s the principal thing; that’s even the principal thing before anything else… I know it’s better for me to sit and keep quiet. When I take a firm stand and keep quiet, I even seem very reasonable, and what’s more, I reflect.

I do not agree, and am even indignant, when anyone – oh, whoever it may be – calls you an idiot; you are too intelligent for such an appellation; but you are strange enough not to be like everyone else, you will admit.

God has saved her mind and heart from an awareness of the horror that visited her melancholy house.