The Complete Novels

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I really do not require such profuse apologies,”

have not spoken so sincerely as I am doing at this moment for years.

Hippolyte is an extremely clever boy, but so prejudiced. He is really a slave to his opinions.”

how easily the heart accustoms itself to comforts, and how difficult it is to tear one’s self away from luxuries which have become habitual and, little by little, indispensable.

“Your love is mingled with hatred, and therefore, when your love passes, there will be the greater misery,”

You are my husband, you are a father, it was your duty to drag me away by force, if in my folly I refused to obey you and go quietly.

you are so eaten up by pride and vanity, that you will end by devouring each other

Oh, prince! with what simplicity, with what almost pastoral simplicity, you look upon life!”

If it had been any other family than the Epanchins’, nothing particular would have happened. But, thanks to Mrs. Epanchin’s invariable fussiness and anxiety, there could not be the slightest hitch in the simplest matters of everyday life, but she immediately foresaw the most dreadful and alarming consequences, and suffered accordingly.

“you will not easily find heaven on earth, and yet you seem to expect to. Heaven is a difficult thing to find anywhere,

that hysterical frame of mind that rides recklessly over every obstacle and plunges blindly through proprieties.

“Well, anyone who does not interest himself in questions such as this is, in my opinion, a mere fashionable dummy.”

I may remark that reality, although it is governed by invariable law, has at times a resemblance to falsehood. In fact, the truer a thing is the less true it sounds.”

What is the good of reading, what is the good of learning anything, for just six months?

could not understand, among other things, how all these people — with so much life in and before them — do not become rich — and I don’t understand it now.

If he has life, all this must be in his power! Whose fault is it that he does not know how to live his life?

The important thing is life — life and nothing else! What is any ‘discovery’ whatever compared with the incessant, eternal discovery of life?

“There are people who find satisfaction in their own touchy feelings, especially when they have just taken the deepest offence; at such moments they feel that they would rather be offended than not.

he grew so pale that he looked like a woman about to have hysterics;

Some people have luck, and everything comes out right with them; others have none, and never a thing turns out fortunately.”

the more impossible the thing is, the more plausible does the lie sound.

“Certainly. Anything is possible when one is intoxicated, as you neatly express it, prince.

know well that he loves me so much that he must hate me.

by remaining in his unbroken line of routine — . I think such an individual really does become a type of his own — a type of commonplaceness which will not for the world, if it can help it, be contented, but strains and yearns to be something original and independent, without the slightest possibility of being so.

there have been men who, though good fellows in themselves, and even benefactors to humanity, have sunk to the level of base criminals for the sake of originality).

We must never forget that human motives are generally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of another.

At all hazards, his guest must be despatched with heart relieved and spirit comforted;

It had always been noticed in the family that the stronger Mrs. Epanchin’s opposition was to any project, the nearer she was, in reality, to giving in.

“It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool’s paradise!

But the prince only looked at the bright side; he did not turn the coat and see the shabby lining.

He was much too happy.

“Your ideas are, of course, most praiseworthy, and in the highest degree patriotic; but you exaggerate the matter terribly. It would be better if we dropped the subject.”

one of us becomes an Atheist, he must needs begin to insist on the prohibition of faith in God by force, that is, by the sword. Why is this?

is easier for a Russian to become an Atheist, than for any other nationality in the world.

And not only does a Russian ‘become an Atheist,’ but he actually believes in Atheism, just as though he had found a new faith,

It is a feeling which does you great credit, but an exaggeration, for all that.”

All he said and did was abrupt, confused, feverish — very likely the words he spoke, as often as not, were not those he wished to say.

am always afraid of spoiling a great Thought or Idea by my absurd manner.

Sincerity is more important than elocution, isn’t it?”

Do you know, I sometimes think it is a good thing to be odd. We can forgive one another more easily, and be more humble.

if we take in knowledge too quickly, we very likely are not taking it in at all.

I cannot understand how anyone can pass by a green tree, and not feel happy only to look at it!

I’m glad that you are not above ordinary human feelings, for once.

no one jumps out of the window if they can help it; but when there’s a fire, the dandiest gentleman or the finest lady in the world will skip out!

never in my life met a man anything like him for noble simplicity of mind and for boundless trustfulness.

The story was so artfully adorned with scandalous details, and persons of so great eminence and importance were apparently mixed up in it, while, at the same time, the evidence was so circumstantial, that it was no wonder the matter gave food for plenty of curiosity and gossip.

those who, in every class of society, are always in haste to explain every event to their neighbours

we confess that we should have great difficulty in giving the required information.

“From the very beginning,” he said, “you began with a lie;

Now, I have come to the conclusion that the basis of all that has happened, has been first of all your innate inexperience (remark the expression ‘innate,’ prince). Then follows your unheard-of simplicity of heart; then comes your absolute want of sense of proportion (to this want you have several times confessed); and lastly, a mass, an accumulation, of intellectual convictions which you, in your unexampled honesty of soul, accept unquestionably as also innate and natural and true.