The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts With Epilogue

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow.

Work, work tirelessly.

still I would want to live, and as long as I have bent to this cup, I will not tear myself from it until I’ve drunk it all!

the notion of the necessity of God—could creep into the head of such a wild and wicked animal as man—so holy, so moving, so wise a notion, which does man such great honor.

Indeed, people speak sometimes about the ‘beastly’ cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no beast could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.

“I think that if the devil does not exist, and man has therefore created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.” “As well as God, then.”

“I tell you, novice, that absurdities are all too necessary on earth.

And if the suffering of children goes to make up the sum of suffering needed to buy truth, then I assert beforehand that the whole of truth is not worth such a price.

And this need for communality of worship is the chief torment of each man individually, and of mankind as a whole, from the beginning of the ages.

For the mystery of man’s being is not only in living, but in what one lives for.

They will finally cry out that the truth is not in you, for it was impossible to leave them in greater confusion and torment than you did, abandoning them to so many cares and insoluble problems.

There are three powers, only three powers on earth, capable of conquering and holding captive forever the conscience of these feeble rebels, for their own happiness—these powers are miracle, mystery, and authority.

But you did not know that as soon as man rejects miracles, he will at once reject God as well, for man seeks not so much God as miracles.

You thirsted for love that is free, and not for the servile raptures of a slave before a power that has left him permanently terrified.

they are rebels, they are feeble rebels, who cannot endure their own rebellion.

he who created them rebels no doubt intended to laugh at them.

You will have many opponents, but your very enemies will love you.

I was young, a child, but it all remained indelibly in my heart, the feeling was hidden there. It all had to rise up and respond in due time. And so it did.

you perhaps did not notice the child, but he saw you, and your unsightly and impious image has remained in his defenseless heart.

And even if you do shine, but see that people are not saved even with your light, remain steadfast, and do not doubt the power of the heavenly light; believe that if they are not saved now, they will be saved later.

The righteous man departs, but his light remains.

Kiss the earth and love it, tirelessly, insatiably,

love all men, love all things, seek this rapture and ecstasy.

Do not be ashamed of this ecstasy, treasure it, for it is a gift from God, a great gift, and it is not given to m...

“I do not rebel against my God, I simply ‘do not accept his world,’” Alyosha suddenly smiled crookedly.

Fragments of thoughts flashed in his soul, catching fire like little stars and dying out at once

to give way to others, yet there reigned in his soul something whole, firm, assuaging, and he was conscious of it himself. He would ardently begin a prayer, he wanted so much to give thanks and to love …

Well, one should forgive pathetic phrases, one must. Pathetic phrases ease the soul, without them men’s grief would be too heavy. Rakitin walked off into the alley. As long as Rakitin thinks about his grudges, he will always walk off into some alley … But the road … the road is wide, straight, bright, crystal, and the sun is at the end of it

He fell to the earth a weak youth and rose up a fighter, steadfast for the rest of his life, and he knew it and felt it suddenly, in

that very moment of his ecstasy. Never, never in all his life would Alyosha forget that moment. “Someone visited my soul in that hour,” he would say afterwards, with firm belief in his words …

He dreamed of this other, this renewed and now “virtuous” life (“it must, it must be virtuous”) ceaselessly and feverishly. He thirsted for this resurrection and renewal. The vile bog he had gotten stuck in of his own will burdened him too much, and, like a great many men in such cases, he believed most of all in a change of place: if only it weren’t for these people, if only it weren’t for these circumstances, if only one could fly away from this cursed place—then everything would be reborn! That was what he believed in and what he longed for.

who all their lives know only how to spend and squander inherited money that they got without any effort, but have no idea of how money is earned.

Yes, perhaps with such people, precisely in such situations, it is the most impossible and fantastic enterprises that seem to offer the best possibilities.

“What terrible tragedies realism inflicts on people,”

On the contrary, it is possible to have a lofty heart, to love purely, to be full of self-sacrifice, and at the same time to hide under tables, to bribe the meanest

“And you, will you forgive me, Andrei?” “Why should I forgive you, you never did anything to me.” “No, for everyone, for everyone, will you alone, right now, this moment, here on the road, forgive me for everyone? Speak, my simple soul!”

I’m not so beautiful myself, and therefore I had no right to consider him repulsive, that’s the thing.

“No, no,” Mitya still seems not to understand, “tell me: why are these burnt-out mothers standing here, why are the people poor, why is the wee one poor, why is the steppe bare, why don’t they embrace and kiss, why don’t they sing joyful songs, why are they blackened with such black misery, why don’t they feed the wee one?”

concocted a whole mountain,” Kolya began casually. “I was going across the market square one day, and they’d just driven in some geese. I stopped and looked at the geese. Suddenly a

and I think that whatever one does one ought to do well,

Oh, Karamazov, I’m profoundly unhappy. Sometimes I imagine God knows what, that everyone is laughing at me, the whole world, and then I … then I’m quite ready to destroy the whole order of things.”

Besides, nowadays almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.

She was not really upset, but somehow all in pieces, and it was perhaps possible that everything had indeed become mixed into a lump in her head.

foot, Is hurting now a little bit … or something like that—I can never remember poetry—I

“Yes, he does believe in it!” Liza’s eyes flashed. “He doesn’t despise anyone,” Alyosha went on, “he simply doesn’t believe anyone. And since he doesn’t believe them, he also, of course, despises them.”

Oh, yes, we’ll be in chains, and there will be no freedom, but then, in our great grief, we will arise once more into joy, without which it’s not possible for man to live, or for God to be, for God gives joy, it’s his prerogative,

It’s impossible for a convict to be without God, even more impossible than for a non-convict!

And it seems to me there’s so much strength in me now that I can overcome everything, all sufferings, only in order to say and tell myself every moment: I am! In a thousand torments—I am; writhing under torture—but I am. Locked up in a tower, but still I exist, I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, still I know it is. And the whole of life is there—in knowing that the sun

“You yourself kept saying then that everything was permitted, so why are you so troubled now, you yourself, sir? You even want to go and give evidence against yourself … Only there will be nothing of the sort! You won’t go and give evidence!”

“He will either rise into the light of truth, or … perish in hatred, taking revenge on himself and everyone for having served something he does not believe in,” Alyosha added bitterly, and again prayed for Ivan.