The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

"And it's Siberia for sacrilege, isn't it?"

Who knows? Perhaps he too was a man of imagination and with some capacity for thought.

Among other things, he considered it undesirable to hurry his daughters to the matrimonial altar and to worry them too much with assurances of his paternal wishes for their happiness, as is the custom among parents of many grown-up daughters.

The general considered that the girls' taste and good sense should be allowed to develop and mature deliberately, and that the parents' duty should merely be to keep watch, in order that no strange or undesirable choice be made;

one cannot live and count each moment; say what you like, but one cannot."

"You say you have been happy, and that proves you have lived, not less, but more than other people.

"Why are you ashamed of your stories the moment after you have told them?"

"It is difficult to judge when such beauty is concerned. I have not prepared my judgment. Beauty is a riddle."

"Such beauty is real power," said Adelaida. "With such beauty as that one might overthrow the world."

Gania came up to the fireplace where Aglaya was standing, to the right of the prince, and in trembling, broken accents said, almost in her ear: "One word, just one word from you, and I'm saved."