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miracle, mystery, and authority.
God. And they will have no secrets from us. We shall allow or forbid them to live with their wives and mistresses, to have or not to have children—according to whether they have been obedient or disobedient—and they will submit to us gladly and cheerfully. The most painful secrets of their
the knowledge of good and evil.
we shall keep the secret,
the harlot who sits upon the beast, and holds in her hands the mystery, shall be put to shame,
strong and powerful, thirsting “to make up the number.” But I awakened and would not serve madness. I turned back and joined the ranks of those who have corrected Thy work. I left the proud and went back to the humble, for the happiness of the humble. What I say to Thee will come to pass, and our dominion will be built up. I repeat, to-morrow Thou shalt see that obedient flock who at a sign from me will hasten to heap up the hot cinders about the pile on which I shall burn Thee for coming to hinder us. For if any one has ever deserved our fires, it is Thou. To-morrow I shall burn Thee. Dixi.’”
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that’s absurd!” he cried, flushing. “Your poem is in praise of Jesus, not in blame of Him—as you meant it to be. And who will believe you about freedom? Is that the way to understand it? That’s not the idea of it in the Orthodox Church . . . That’s Rome, and not even the whole of Rome, it’s false—those are the worst of the Catholics, the Inquisitors, the Jesuits! . . . And there could not be such a fantastic
fantasy. But allow me to say: do you really think that the Roman Catholic movement of the last centuries is actually nothing but the lust of power, of filthy earthly gain? Is that Father
“I meant to end it like this.
Notes of the Life of the deceased Priest and Monk, the Elder Zossima, taken from his own words by Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES (a) Father Zossima’s Brother
But how could he love those new ones when those first children are no more, when he has lost them? Remembering them, how could he be fully happy
with those new ones, however dear the new ones might be? But he could, he could. It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy.
“The stone which the builders rejected has become the corner-stone of the building.”
“The study of the classics, if you ask my opinion, is simply a police measure, that’s simply why it has been introduced into our schools.” By degrees Kolya began to get breathless again. “Latin and Greek were introduced because they are a bore and because they stupefy the intellect. It was dull before, so what could they do to make things duller? It was senseless enough before, so what could they do to make it more senseless? So they thought of Greek and Latin. That’s my opinion, I hope I shall never change it,” Kolya finished abruptly. His cheeks were flushed.
“Yes, life is full, there is life even underground,” he began again. “You wouldn’t believe, Alexey, how I want to live now, what a thirst for existence and consciousness has sprung up in me within these peeling walls. Rakitin doesn’t understand that; all he cares about is building a house and letting flats. But I’ve been longing for you. And what is suffering? I am not afraid of it, even if it were beyond reckoning. I am not afraid of it now. I was afraid of it before. Do you know, perhaps I won’t answer at the trial at all . . . And I seem to have such strength in me now, that I think I could
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what is goodness?
The Devil. Ivan’s Nightmare
Mephistopheles declared to Faust
The Grand Inquisitor,”
man-god,
something seemed to fetter his arms and legs. He strained every effort to break his chains, but in vain. The knocking at the window grew louder and louder. At last the chains were broken and Ivan leapt up from the sofa.
“The anguish of a proud determination. An earnest conscience!” God, in Whom he disbelieved, and His truth were gaining mastery over his heart, which still refused to submit.
And, what’s more, he went into psychological subtleties into which he could not have entered, if he had the least conscious and malicious prejudice against the prisoner.
But profound as psychology is, it’s a knife that cuts both ways.”
“Here you have psychology;
what is a father—a real father?
such a father as old Karamazov cannot be called a father and does not deserve to be. 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 any one venture to give her the sacred name of mother?
act only upon convictions justified by reason and experience, which have been passed through the crucible of analysis;
“Boys, we shall soon part. I shall be for some time with my two brothers, of whom one is going to Siberia and the other is lying at death’s door. But soon I shall leave this town, perhaps for a long time, so we shall part. Let us make a compact here, at Ilusha’s stone, that we will never forget Ilusha and one another. And whatever happens to us later in life, if we don’t meet for twenty years afterwards, let us always remember how we buried the poor boy at whom we once threw stones, do you remember, by the bridge? and afterwards we all grew so fond of him. He was a fine boy, a kind-hearted,
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“Ah, children, ah, dear friends, don’t be afraid of life! How good life is when one does something good and just!”
