The Brothers Karamazov

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

They have this social justification for every nasty thing they do!

Oh, yes, we shall be in chains and there will be no freedom, but then, in our great sorrow, we shall rise again to joy, without which man cannot live nor God exist, for God gives joy:

universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God?

I always come back to that. For whom is man going to love then? To whom will he be thankful? To whom will he sing the hymn? Rakitin laughs.

Say, 'I am sorry, forgive me,' and a shower of reproaches will follow! Nothing will make her forgive you simply and directly, she'll humble you to the dust, bring forward things that have never happened, recall everything, forget nothing, add something of her own, and only then forgive you.

Thomas believed, not because he saw Christ risen, but because he wanted to believe, before he saw. Look

If everything in the universe were sensible, nothing would happen. There would be no events without you, and there must be events.

So against the grain I serve to produce events and do what's irrational because I am commanded to.

directly." I think, therefore I am. "You'd

Only those who have got no conscience, for how can they be tortured by conscience when they have none? But decent people who have conscience and a sense of honour suffer for it.

'all things are accomplished in accordance with the inscrutable decrees of Providence, and what seems a misfortune sometimes leads to extraordinary, though unapparent, benefits.

If stern destiny has deprived you of your nose, it's to your advantage that no one can ever pull you by your nose.' 'Holy father, that's no comfort,' cried the despairing marquis. 'I'd

"The anguish of a proud determination. An earnest conscience!"

The effect prepared by the prosecutor did not come off at all.

she had not intentionally slandered him when she cried that Mitya despised her for her bowing down to him! She believed it herself. She had been firmly convinced, perhaps ever since that bow, that the simplehearted Mitya, who even then adored her, was laughing at her and despising her.

Oh, he, too, can be good and noble, but only when all goes well with him.

'The sense of their own degradation is as essential to those reckless, unbridled natures as the sense of their lofty generosity.'

And that's true, they need continually this unnatural mixture.

thrown off his balance by philosophical ideas above his level and certain modern theories of duty, which he learnt in practice from the reckless life of his master, who was also perhaps his father- Fyodor Pavlovitch; and,

the historial method of exposition, beloved by all nervous orators, who find in its limitation a check on their own eager rhetoric.

But everyone realised at once that the speaker might suddenly rise to genuine pathos and "pierce the heart with untold power."

Outraged morality, and still more outraged taste, is often relentless. We have, in the talented prosecutor's speech, heard a stern analysis of the prisoner's character and conduct, and his severe critical attitude to the case was evident.

psychology is a two edged weapon. Let me turn the other edge now and see what comes of it.

I admit that the chain of evidence- the coincidences- are really suggestive. But examine all these facts separately, regardless of their connection. Why,

But, excuse me, conscience implies penitence, and the suicide may not have felt penitence, but only despair.

Despair and penitence are two very different things. Despair may be vindictive and irreconcilable, and the suicide, laying his hands on himself, may well have felt redoubled hatred for those whom he had envied all his life.

but the greater the power, the more terrible its responsibility.

"Gentlemen of the jury, people like my client, who are fierce, unruly, and uncontrolled on the surface, are sometimes, most frequently indeed, exceedingly tender-hearted, only they don't express it. Don't laugh, don't laugh at my idea!

Filial love for an unworthy father is an absurdity, an impossibility.

Love cannot be created from nothing: only God can create something from nothing.

'Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.' Yes, let us first fulfil Christ's injunction ourselves and only then venture to expect it of our children.

"Gentlemen of the jury, was she a mother to her children? She gave birth to them, indeed; but was she a mother to them? Would anyone venture to give her the sacred name of mother?

the father is not merely he who begets the child, but he who begets it and does his duty by it.

intellect, but can only accept by faith, or, better to say, on faith, like many other things which I do not understand, but which religion bids me believe. But in that case let it be kept outside the

me, not even my sex, at that moment, at the moment of passion, perhaps, inflamed by wine, and he has only transmitted to me a propensity to drunkenness- that's all he's done for me…

Why am I bound to love him simply for begetting me when he has cared nothing for me all my life after?'

'Father, tell me, why must I love you? Father, show me that I must love you,' and if that father is able to answer him and show him good reason, we have a real,

prejudice, but on a rational, responsible and strictly humanitarian basis.

"Better acquit ten guilty men than punish one innocent man!

"Jupiter, you are angry, therefore you are wrong," which provoked a burst of approving laughter in the audience,

You wanted to make yourself another man by suffering.

I say, only remember that other man always, all your life and wherever you go; and that will be enough for you. Your refusal

that great cross will only serve to make you feel all your life even greater duty, and that constant feeling will do more to make you a ne...

They all stood still by the big stone. Alyosha looked and the whole picture of what Snegiryov had described to him that day, how Ilusha, weeping and hugging his father, had cried, "Father, father, how he insulted you," rose at once before his imagination.

'Yes, I was good and brave and honest then!' Let him laugh to himself, that's no matter, a man often laughs at what's good and kind.

But I assure you, boys, that as he laughs he will say at once in his heart, 'No, I do wrong to laugh, for that's not a thing to laugh at.'

Boys, my dear boys, let us all be generous and brave like Ilusha, clever, brave and generous like Kolya (though he will be ever so much cleverer when he is grown up), and let us all be as modest, as clever and sweet as Kartashov.

"Ah, children, ah, dear friends, don't be afraid of life! How good life is when one does something good and just!"