Notes from a Dead House (Vintage Classics)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

It’s astonishing how much a uniform does for these people.

I remember that those long, boring days were as monotonous as rainwater dripping from the roof drop by drop. I remember that only the passionate desire for resurrection, renewal, a new life, gave me the strength to wait and hope.

I waited, I counted off each day, and, though there were a thousand left, I counted off each one with delight, bade farewell to it, buried it, and, with the coming of the new day, rejoiced that it was no longer a thousand, but nine hundred and ninety-nine.

“What are we here? We live, but we’re not people; we die, but we’re not dead men.

On the eve of the very last day, at dusk, I walked for the last time along the fence around our whole prison. How many thousands of times I had walked along that fence in all those years!

Man this is so bittersweet that IM crying

I must say it all: these people are extraordinary people. They are perhaps the most gifted, the strongest of all our people. But their mighty strength perishes for nothing, perishes abnormally, unlawfully, irretrievably. And who is to blame? That’s just it: who is to blame?

Poor Sushilov! He wept when I gave him my old prison clothes, shirts, under-fetters, and some money. “It’s not that, not that!” he said, trying hard to control the trembling of his lips. “But to lose you, Alexander Petrovich? How can I go on here without you?!” I said good-bye for the last time to Akim Akimych as well. “It will be your turn soon!” I said to him. “I’ll be here a long time, a long time yet, sir,” he murmured, shaking my hand. I threw myself on his neck and we kissed.

Poor Sushilov indeed ((((

Yes, with God! Freedom, a new life, resurrection from the dead … What a glorious moment!

FUCK YOOU DOSTOYEVSKY I AM IAM I AM IIIII......IM NOT OKAY

And never in my life have I loved anything so much as the forest, with its mushrooms and wild berries, its bugs and little birds, hedgehogs, squirrels, with its damp smell of rotten leaves, which I love so much.

Dostoyevsky's love for life never truly died aand i love that. This is why he calls prisoners perfect childdren: they love freedom in a childlike manner.

Of course, anyone would reassure a child, but here, in this solitary encounter, something quite different happened, as it were, and if I had been his own son, he could not have given me a look shining with more radiant love—and who made him do it? He was our own serf, and I was his little master; no one would learn how tender he had been with me and reward him for it.

Here he learned tenderness and how truly good man can be even if he is a brigand.

Permission to sell vodka involved the ritual of kissing the cross and vowing not to dilute the drink.

That's actually hilarious