The Karamazov Brothers

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

You know, it’s as though everyone had suddenly conspired to tell lies, and they’ve been lying ever since. Everyone says they hate wickedness, but, deep down, they all love it.’

What would it mean to believe the opposite?

‘It’s just that he doesn’t believe anyone. If he doesn’t believe anyone, then it means, of course, he despises everyone.’

Believe or despise, is that our choice?

About ten seconds later she withdrew her hand, returned slowly and without a sound to her chair, and, sitting bolt upright, stared hard at her darkly bruised finger as blood oozed from under the nail. Her lips quivered as she whispered in quick succession: ‘Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch!’

What is actually going on? I surely know nothing of self-mutilation.

‘You see, I had none of these doubts before, but they were lurking inside me all the time. Perhaps it’s precisely because, unbeknown to me, ideas were raging in me that I drank and fought and raised hell.

Know thyself.

Grigory’s honest, but stupid. A lot of people are honest because they’re stupid. That’s one of Rakitin’s theories.

That would be easy to believe wouldn't it.

That would be running away from suffering! I’d have seen the star and refused to follow it; I’d have been shown the path to redemption and turned away.

I have turned away from my conscience, my inner judge.

‘If I hadn’t made up my mind so definitely about tomorrow,’ he thought suddenly with delight, ‘I wouldn’t have wasted a whole hour in helping the chap out, I’d have just walked past and not bothered about whether he froze to death…

The failure to orient yourself properly brings forth monsters.

if you start kicking me it means you believe in my reality, because one doesn’t kick a ghost, does one?

One doesn't kick a ghost, people are what they do, not what they say.

I’m feeding you belief and disbelief alternately, and I have my own reasons for that. It’s the latest method; when you really have ceased to believe in me, it’ll be you who will try to convince me that I am not a dream, that I actually exist; I know you.

Freudian projection? If you don't believe you generate your reality, you will be convinced your object created it. If you don't know you are the devil, you will be convinced the devil is in the world?

You know, Alyosha, you know,’ he added with a profound seriousness and somehow confidingly, ‘I would much prefer him to be himself and not me!’

"I'd prefer not to think of myself as evil."

“Conscience! What’s conscience? I make it myself. So why do I suffer remorse?

Indeed.

God, in whom he did not believe, and truth were overwhelming his soul, which still did not want to submit.

What's real is what affects you whether you face it or not.

In the real world, which not only bestows rights but itself imposes enormous obligations—in this world, if we want to behave like civilized human beings—come to that, if we want to behave like Christians—we should, indeed we must, put into practice only those ideas which have been tested against reason and experience, which have been tempered in the crucible of empirical analysis; in a word, we must act rationally, not mindlessly as in a dream or in delirium, so as not to harm our fellow man, not to stifle him or destroy him.

Rights and obligations! It's going to take everything we've got to manage that balance.

“Drive nature out through the door, and she will make her way back through the window.”

Can't shake morality.

It will not be the mad troika, but the triumphal Russian coach which will inexorably and majestically reach its destination.

It's only the deep conviction, unfolding eternally, that manifest potential. Enough of these fizzling flares of enthusiasm! (Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil)

‘Jupiter, you are angry, that means you are in the wrong’,

What lack of foresight propelled you into such instability?

I would like to die for the whole of humanity, and if that means disgrace, so what; let our names perish!

There is a central project, it simply takes a while to realise it.

don’t be afraid of life! How good life is when one does something noble and true!’

And if life is not good, you know what you must do.

The wealth you give away is the only wealth you will ever truly possess’):

What are you building. You must build something!

‘And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all’:

An ode to responsibility. Or the status conferred to the most responsible.