The Brothers Karamazov

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

the greater the sinner the more he loved him.

And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself.

But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.’”

There is no virtue if there is no immortality.”

If he’s honest, he’ll steal; if he’s humane, he’ll murder; if he’s faithful, he’ll deceive.

It is not money, it’s not comfort Ivan is seeking. Perhaps it’s suffering he is seeking.”

if I were struck by every horror of man’s disillusionment—still I should want to live and, having once tasted of the cup, I would not turn away from it till I had drained it!

I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic.

One loves the first strength of one’s youth.

S’il n’existait pas Dieu, il faudrait l’inventer.

And man has actually invented God. And what’s strange, what would be marvelous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man. So holy it is, so touching, so wise and so great a credit it does to man.

And I advise you never to think about it either, my dear Alyosha, especially about God, whether He exists or not. All such questions are utterly inappropriate for a mind created with an idea of only three dimensions.

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidian mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all

that has happened with men—but though all that may come to pass, I don’t accept it.

And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price.

So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find some one to worship.

I tell Thee that man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find some one quickly to whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.

Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.

Which is most capable of conceiving a great idea and serving it—the rich man in his isolation or the man who has freed himself from the tyranny of material things and habits? The monk is reproached for his solitude, “You have secluded yourself within the walls of the monastery for your own salvation, and have forgotten the brotherly service of humanity!”

“I am drunk! I’m drunk as it is . . . drunk with you . . . and now I’ll be drunk with wine, too.”

I should like some one to torture me, marry me and then torture me, deceive me and go away. I don’t want to be happy.” “You are in love with disorder?” “Yes, I want disorder. I keep wanting to set fire to the house. I keep imagining how I’ll creep up and set fire to the house on the sly; it must be on the sly. They’ll try to put it out, but it’ll go on burning. And I shall know and say nothing. Ah, what silliness! And how bored I am!”

he loved her madly, though at times he hated her so that he might have murdered her.

They suffer, of course . . . but then they live, they live a real life, not a fantastic one, for suffering is life. Without suffering what would be the pleasure of it? It would be transformed into an endless church service; it would be holy, but tedious. But what about me? I suffer, but still, I don’t live.

Je pense, donc je suis,

for how can they be tortured by conscience when they have none?