The Brothers Karamazov: Translated by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky
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some of them sink so far down into the lake that they can no longer come up again, and ‘these God forgets’
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Without a firm idea of what he lives for, man will not consent to live and will sooner destroy himself than remain on earth, even if there is bread all around him.
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But you did not know that as soon as man rejects miracles, he will at once reject God as well,
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for man seeks not so much God as miracles.
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I ask myself: “What is hell?” And I answer thus: “The suffering of being no longer able to love.”
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People speak of the material flames of hell. I do not explore this mystery, and I fear it, but I think that if there were material flames, truly people would be glad to have them, for, as I fancy, in material torment they might forget, at least for a moment, their far more terrible spiritual torment.
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Jealous men forgive sooner than anyone else, and all women know it.
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there is far more foolishness in us.
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No knowledge and boundless conceit
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Because a woman—devil knows what a woman is, brother, I’m a good judge of that at least! Try going and confessing your guilt to her; say, ‘I’m guilty, forgive me, pardon me,’ and right then and there you’ll be showered with reproaches! She’ll never forgive you directly and simply, she’ll humble you in the dust, she’ll take away things that weren’t even there, she’ll take everything, she’ll forget nothing, she’ll add things of her own, and only then will she forgive you. And that’s the best of them, the best! She’ll scrape up the last scraps and heap them on your head—such bloodthirstiness just ...more
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proofs are no help to faith, especially material proofs. Thomas believed not because he saw the risen Christ but because he wanted to believe even before that.2
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he who begets is not yet a father; a father is he who begets and proves worthy of it.
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‘But did he love me when he was begetting me,’ he asks, wondering more and more. ‘Did he beget me for my own sake? He did not know me, not even my sex at that moment,
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Why should I love him just because he begot me and then never loved me all my life?’
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You must know that there is nothing higher, or stronger, or sounder, or more useful afterwards in life, than some good memory, especially a memory from childhood, from the parental home.
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You hear a lot said about your education, yet some such beautiful, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education.