Demons

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

A Hero of Our Time.

Dead Souls.

Poor Folk

Several short stories

‘The Little Hero’,

Fathers and Sons.

‘The Meek One’

Society Tales explore the interplay between power and manners, emotion and manipulation in a world whose hierarchical social structure is as important as any character.

Further Reading

‘the fruit of my first, joyous and as yet unclouded love’,

There are strange friendships: two friends almost want to devour each other, and they spend their entire lives living that way, but meanwhile they cannot part. There is not even a way they can part: the one who takes to acting up and breaks the tie will be the first to fall sick and perhaps die, if that should happen.

jolly malice.

And anyone who has no people has no God either! You can be quite sure that all who cease to understand their own people and lose their ties with them, immediately and to the same extent, also lose the faith of their fathers, and either become atheists or indifferent.

found him a man of extremely good sense.

‘Full freedom will come only when it makes no difference whether to live or not to live. That’s the goal for everyone.’

God is the pain of the fear of death. Whoever conquers pain and fear will himself become God.

You wouldn’t believe it, but one line sounds as happy as can be, and the next is written in the depths of despair.

Man is unhappy because he doesn’t know he’s happy;

God is the synthesis of the personality of an entire people, taken from its beginning to its end.

Evidently it’s true that the entire second half of a man’s life is usually composed solely of the habits accumulated during the first half.’

She dreamed of making people happy, and of reconciling the irreconcilable, or rather, of uniting everyone and everything in the adoration of her own person.

sort

I want to take my life because that’s my idea, because I don’t want to be afraid of death, because… because it’s none of your business…

What good are a lot of idle words for the sake of some kind of false pride? Isn’t it better to part amicably?

The remaining guests represented two types: noble pride that had been crushed to the point of bitterness, or the first and noblest impulse of ardent youth.

‘It’s just as difficult to cut off a hundred million heads as to remake the world through propaganda.

We will kill desire: we will foster drunkenness, gossip, denunciation; we will foster unheard-of depravity; we will stifle every genius in its infancy. Everything reduced to a common denominator, complete equality.

You

Voltaire. Candide.

The

probably some inexperienced little fool who hadn’t yet seen anything of the world, and who was inclined to find everything amusing anyway.

Note that he belongs to the cause on special grounds, and wants to be useful; I can’t reveal any more to you.

“Yes, this is true, this is good.” 4 This… this is not deep emotion, but is simply joy.

‘This isn’t right, it isn’t right! No, it’s absolutely not right!’

It’s a shame not to grab hold of what is lying idle and staring open-mouthed at us.

‘In whom? In Him? Listen.’

Give it to me; it’s fine just as it is; give it to me, give it to me!’

riverbank

Sofya Matveyevna.

know

After the autopsy, our medical men rejected insanity completely and resolutely.

‘God will forgive you for your lack of belief, for you honour the Holy Spirit, without knowing him.’

saintly fool,

Notes