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Had someone then convinced the most honest Stepan Trofimovich, on irrefutable evidence, that he had nothing at all to fear, he would no doubt have been offended.
Then, having kept her friend all day without an answer, she would meet him as if nothing had happened, as if nothing special had taken place the day before. She gradually drilled him so well that he himself did not dare to remind her of the previous day and only kept peeking into her eyes for some time. But she forgot nothing, and he sometimes forgot much too quickly, and, often that same day, encouraged by her composure, would laugh and frolic over the champagne, if friends stopped by. What venom there must have been in her eyes at those moments, yet he noticed nothing! Maybe after a week, or
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Perhaps it was only a feminine game on her part, the manifestation of an unconscious feminine need, so natural on certain extraordinary feminine occasions. However, I would not vouch for it; inscrutable even to this day are the depths of the feminine heart.
One must do Stepan Trofimovich justice: he knew how to win his pupil over. The whole secret lay in his being a child himself.
What could be stupider than someone who is stupid and kind?”
Stepan Trofimovich once whispered to me at the time, “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? Can that, too, come from sentimentality?”
It was mainly shame that oppressed him, though during this week we did not see anyone and sat by ourselves all the time; but he was ashamed even before me, and to such an extent that the more he revealed to me, the more vexed he was with me for it.
She seemed proud, and sometimes even bold; I do not know if she succeeded in being kind; but I know that she wanted terribly and suffered over forcing herself to be a little bit kind. In her nature there were, of course, many beautiful yearnings and very just undertakings; but it was as if everything in her were eternally seeking its level without finding it, everything was chaos, restlessness, agitation. Perhaps she made too severe demands on herself, never finding herself strong enough to satisfy them.
“Each man cannot judge except by himself,” he said, blushing. “There will be entire freedom when it makes no difference whether one lives or does not live. That is the goal to everything.”
“Man is afraid of death because he loves life, that’s how I understand it,” I observed, “and that is what nature tells us.” “That is base, that is the whole deceit!” his eyes began to flash. “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
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“Listen, Shatov, what am I to conclude from all that?” “Eh, conclude whatever you like,” he answered in a weary and disgusted voice, and sat down at his desk.
But, apparently, the demon of the most arrogant pride took possession of Varvara Petrovna precisely when she had the slightest suspicion that she was for some reason considered humiliated. And Praskovya Ivanovna, like many weak people who allow themselves to be offended for a long time without protesting, was notable for being remarkably passionate in the attack the moment events turned in her favor.
He was terribly scared, one could see that, but his vanity also suffered, and one could guess that out of irritated vanity, despite his fear, he might venture any sort of insolence if the occasion arose. He apparently feared for every movement of his clumsy body. For all such gentlemen, as is known, when by some odd chance they appear in society, the worst suffering comes from their own hands and the constant awareness of the impossibility of somehow decently disposing of them.
By now he was pacing the room again. A trait of such people—this total incapacity to keep their desires to themselves; this uncontrollable urge, on the contrary, to reveal them at once, even in all their untidiness, the moment they arise.
“I didn’t answer your ‘why’? You’re awaiting an answer to your ‘why’?” the captain reiterated, winking. “This little word ‘why’ has been poured all over the universe since the very first day of creation, madam, and every moment the whole of nature cries out ‘Why?’ to its creator, and for seven thousand years4 has received no answer. Is it for Captain Lebyadkin alone to answer, and would that be just, madam?”
If family honor and the heart’s undeserved disgrace cry out among men, then—can a man be to blame even then?” he bellowed suddenly, forgetting himself as before.
Note that being a realist he cannot lie, and truth is dearer to him than success . . . save, naturally, on those special occasions when success is dearer than truth.”
And a real, undoubted grief is sometimes capable of making a solid and steadfast man even out of a phenomenally light-minded one, if only for a short time; moreover, real and true grief has sometimes even made fools more intelligent, also only for a time, of course; grief has this property.
Those who know how to speak well, speak briefly.
you believed that Roman Catholicism was no longer Christianity; you affirmed that Rome proclaimed a Christ who had succumbed to the third temptation of the devil, and that, having announced to the whole world that Christ cannot stand on earth without an earthly kingdom, Catholicism thereby proclaimed the Antichrist, thus ruining the whole Western world. You precisely pointed out that if France is suffering, Catholicism alone is to blame, for she rejected the foul Roman God but has not found a new one.
The stronger the nation, the more particular its God. There has never yet been a nation without a religion, that is, without an idea of evil and good. Every nation has its own idea of evil and good, and its own evil and good.
Reason has never been able to define evil and good, or even to separate evil from good, if only approximately; on the contrary, it has always confused them, shamefully and pitifully; and science has offered the solution of the fist.
“What are you doing here?” “Watching the clock go round.
With him, once he says a man is a scoundrel, then except from the scoundrel he knows nothing about him. And if it’s a fool, then he’s got no other title for him except fool. But maybe I’m only a fool on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and on Thursdays I’m smarter than he is.
“It must be true that the whole second half of a man’s life is most often made up only of habits accumulated during the first half.”
If you had a notion, you should have kept it to yourself; smart people are silent nowadays, they don’t talk.”
This was something unconscious, like a sort of feeling, but all the stronger the more unaccountable it was.
Generally, in every misfortune of one’s neighbor there is always something that gladdens the outsider’s eye—and that even no matter who you are.
Naturally, he felt a need to reward himself for days of obedience with little moments of rebellion.
This’ll make you laugh: what first of all affects them terribly is a uniform. There’s nothing stronger than a uniform. I purposely invent ranks and positions: I have secretaries, secret stool pigeons, treasurers, chairmen, registrars, their adjuncts—it’s all very much liked and has caught on splendidly. Then the next force, naturally, is sentimentality. You know, with us socialism spreads mostly through sentimentality. But the trouble here is with these biting lieutenants; you get burned every so often. Then come the out-and-out crooks; well, they can be nice folk, very profitable on occasion,
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Starting from unlimited freedom, I conclude with unlimited despotism.
don’t contradict me, or discourage, I beg you, because nothing is more unbearable when a man is unhappy than for a hundred friends to come right then and point out to him how stupid he’s been.
“So, tell me, tell me everything,” Karmazinov mumbled and lisped, as though it were possible just to up and tell him one’s whole life over twenty-five years. But this silly frivolity was in “high” tone.
generally speaking, the Russian man is boundlessly amused by any socially scandalous commotion. True, there was among us something rather more serious than the mere thirst for scandal; there was a general irritation, something unappeasably spiteful; it seemed everyone was terribly sick of everything. Some sort of general, muddled cynicism had come to reign, a forced, as if strained, cynicism.
But for toasts champagne was necessary, and since one could not really drink champagne on an empty stomach, a luncheon, of itself, also became necessary.
She would not believe me and would regard me as a dreamer. And how could she be of help? “Eh,” I thought, “really, what business is it of mine? I’ll take the bow off and go home, once it starts.”
Though he was smiling ironically, all the same he was greatly struck. His face simply said: “I’m not the way you think, I’m for you, only praise me, praise me more, as much as possible, I like it terribly . . .”
“I don’t remember, Liza. Why a dead person? One must live . . .” “And you stop short. You’ve quite lost your eloquence. I’ve lived my hour in the world, and enough. Do you remember Khristofor Ivanovich?” “No, I don’t,” he frowned. “Khristofor Ivanbvich, in Lausanne? You got terribly sick of him. He’d open the door and always say, ‘I’ve just come for a minute,’ and he’d sit for the whole day. I don’t want to be like Khristofor Ivanovich and sit for the whole day.”
Do you know how much it cost me, this new hope? I paid for it with life.”
Liputin finally hated him so much that he could not tear himself away from him. It was something like a nervous fit. He counted every piece of steak the man sent into his mouth, hated him for the way he opened it, for the way he chewed, for the way he sucked savoringly on the fatter pieces, hated the beefsteak itself. Finally, things became as if confused in his eyes; he began to feel slightly dizzy; heat and chill ran alternately down his spine.
Shatov and Kirillov, who shared the same yard, hardly ever saw each other, and when they met they did not nod or speak: they had spent much too long “lying” beside each other in America.
If there is no God, then I am God.”
“If there is God, then the will is all his, and I cannot get out of his will. If not, the will is all mine, and it is my duty to proclaim self-will.” “Self-will? And why is it your duty?” “Because the will has all become mine. Can it be that no one on the whole planet, having ended God and believed in self-will, dares to proclaim self-will to the fullest point? It’s as if a poor man received an inheritance, got scared, and doesn’t dare go near the bag, thinking he’s too weak to own it.
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 . . .
“So that they’ll believe you, you must be as obscure as possible, precisely like that, with just hints. You must show only a little corner of the truth, exactly enough to get them excited. They’ll always heap up more lies for themselves, and will certainly believe themselves better than us, and that’s the best thing, the best of all!
Nastasya mentioned later that he had gone to bed late and slept. But that proves nothing; they say men sentenced to death sleep very soundly even the night before their execution.
Ask a peasant to do something for you, and, if he can and wants to, he will serve you diligently and cordially; but ask him to fetch a little vodka—and his usual calm cordiality suddenly transforms into a sort of hasty, joyful obligingness, almost a family solicitude for you.
Oh, blessed is he to whom God always sends a woman,
The worst of it is that I believe myself when I lie. The most difficult thing in life is to live and not lie . . . and . . . and not believe one’s own lie, yes, yes, that’s precisely it!
Far more than his own happiness, it is necessary for a man to know and believe every moment that there is somewhere a perfect and peaceful happiness, for everyone and for everything . . . The whole law of human existence consists in nothing other than a man’s always being able to bow before the immeasurably great. If people are deprived of the immeasurably great, they will not live and will die in despair. The immeasurable and infinite is as necessary for man as the small planet he inhabits . . .
