The Idiot (AmazonClassics Edition)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

But here I should imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at all—but the certain knowledge that in an hour,—then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now—this very instant—your soul must quit your body and that you will no longer be a man—and that this is certain, certain! that’s the point—the certainty of it. Just that instant when you place your head on the block and hear the iron grate over your head—then—that quarter of a second is the most awful of all.

I believe that to execute a man for murder is to punish him immeasurably more dreadfully than is equivalent to his crime. A murder by sentence is far more dreadful than a murder committed by a criminal.

anything, but that there was no reason, after all, why a man should not be allowed to entertain a natural desire to lighten his conscience,

I felt how lovely it was, but the loveliness weighed upon me somehow or other, and made me feel melancholy.” “Why?” asked Alexandra. “I don’t know; I always feel like that when I look at the beauties of nature for the first time; but then, I was ill at that time, of course!”

I used to watch the line where earth and sky met, and long to go and seek there for some great city where life should be grander and newer than our own—and then it struck me that life may be grand enough even in a prison.”

“The repugnance to and uncertainty of what must ensue almost immediately were dreadful, he said; but worst of all was the idea, what should I do if I were not to die now? What if I were to return to life again? What an eternity of days, and all mine! How I should grudge and count up every minute of it, so as to waste not a single instant! He said that this thought weighed so upon him and became such a terrible burden upon his brain that he could not bear it, and wished they would shoot him quickly and have done with it.”

Children soothe and cure the wounded heart.

People may consider me a child if they like. I am often called an idiot, and at one time I certainly was so ill that I was nearly as bad as an idiot; but I am not an idiot now—how can I possibly be so when I know myself that I am considered one?

I think I must be one of those who are born to be in luck, for one does not often meet with people whom one feels he can love from the first sight of their faces; and yet, no sooner do I step out of the railway carriage than I happen upon you!

“I know it is more or less a shamefaced thing to speak of one’s feelings before others; and yet here am I talking like this to you, and am not a bit ashamed or shy. I am an unsociable sort of fellow and shall very likely not come to see any of you again for some time; but don’t think the worse of me for that, it is not that I do not value your society; and you must never suppose that I have taken offence at anything.

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

A fool with a heart and no brains is just as unhappy as a fool with brains and no heart. I am one and you are the other, and therefore both of us suffer, both of us are unhappy.”

He had calculated upon her eventual love, and tried to seduce her with a lavish expenditure upon her comforts and luxuries, knowing too well how easily the heart accustoms itself to comforts and how difficult it is to tear one’s self away from luxuries which have become habitual and, little by little, indispensable.

It was extremely difficult to account for Nastasia’s strange condition of mind, which became stranger and stranger each moment, and which none could avoid noticing.

“The prince is this to me, that I see in him, for the first time in all my life, a man endowed with real truthfulness of spirit, and I trust him.

“He may be an idiot, but he knows that flattery is the best road to success here.”

A hungry longing to go on and speak his mind out, seemed to flash in the man’s eyes.

“You don’t separate your love from your malicious feelings, and therefore when your love passes away there will be the greater misery,”

She is sure of your love; but besides that, she must attribute something else to you,—some sort of worth or dignity as a man,—otherwise the thing would not be.

“You are revengeful, you know, and jealous, therefore when anything annoying happens to you, you exaggerate its significance.

He was in a state of nervous excitement and perturbation; he noticed nothing and no one; and he felt a craving for solitude, to be alone with his thoughts, and his sufferings, and to give himself up to them passively.

Then why was he so affected now, having seen them as he expected?

The dreadful demon had him now, and would not let go of him again.

“What a regular old woman I am to-day,” he had said to himself each time, with annoyance. “I believe in every foolish presentiment that comes into my head.”

“in the poem the knight is described as a man capable of fixing up, and living up to an ideal all his life. That sort of thing is not to be found every day among the men of our times.

“you will not easily find Heaven in this earth, and yet you seem to expect to discover it here. Heaven is a difficult thing to get hold of anywhere, prince; far more difficult than appears to that sterling good heart of yours. Better stop this conversation, or we shall all be growing quite disturbed in our minds.

A coward is a man who is afraid and runs away; the man who is frightened but does not run away, is not quite a coward,”

Either she loves you without limits, or—well, if she loves you, why does she wish to marry you to another girl? She says, ‘I want to see him happy,’ which is to say—she loves you.”

“Let me add to this that in every idea emanating from genius, or even in every serious human idea—born in the human brain—there always remains something—some sediment—which cannot be made over to others though one wrote volumes upon the ‘idea,’ and lectured upon it for five and thirty years. There is always a something, a remnant, which will never come out from under your shell, but will remain there with you, and you alone, for ever and ever, and you will die, perhaps, without having imparted what may be the very essence of your idea to a single living soul.

“Of course I know they say that one must be obedient, and of course, too, the prince is one of those who say so: that one must be obedient without questions, out of pure goodness of heart, and that for my worthy conduct in this matter I shall meet with reward in another world. We humiliate Providence by attributing to it our own comprehension, our own little private way of looking at things, out of annoyance that we cannot fathom the ways of Providence itself.

“If I had had the power to prevent my own birth I should certainly never consent to accept existence under such ridiculous conditions. However, I have the power to end my existence, although I do but lay down that which is already numbered and sentenced to annihilation. It is an insignificant power, and my revolt is equally insignificant.

“It is the heart which is the best teacher of refinement and dignity, not the dancing-master,”

There is nothing so annoying as to be fairly rich, of a fairly good family, good presence, average education, to be “not stupid,” kind hearted,—and yet to have no talent at all, no originality,—not a single idea of one’s own—to be, in fact, “just like everyone else.”

Of such people there are countless numbers in this world—far more even than appear. They can be divided into two classes as all men are—that is: into those of very limited intellect, and those who are “much cleverer.” The former of these classes is the happier.

We must never forget that human motives are generally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of another.

It never struck him that all this refined simplicity and nobility of soul, and wit and personal dignity might possibly be no more than an artistic development.

Oh! what does grief matter—what does misfortune matter, if one knows how to be happy?

Oh, it is my own fault that I cannot express myself well enough; but there are lovely things at every step I take—things which even the most lost and miserable man in the world recognises as beautiful.

Look at a little child—look at God’s lovely day-dawn—look at the grass growing—look at the eyes that love you, as they gaze back into your own eyes!”

You could not love him because you are too proud—no, not proud, that is an error on my part; but because you are too vain—no, not quite that either; too self-loving; you are self-loving to an insane degree; your letters to me are a proof of it.

what began with a lie was bound to end with a lie, such is the law of nature.

an honest man, did not consider a dishonoured woman to be disgraced if the sin were not her own, but that of a disgusting social libertine!

We are told in church, of course, that a far worse woman was forgiven, but we don’t find that she was told that she had done well, or that she was worthy of honour and respect!

Again, how can you love a girl and yet so humiliate her before a rival as to throw her over for the sake of another woman, before the very eyes of that other woman, when you have already made her a formal proposal of marriage?

The prince had told Evgenie Pavlovitch with perfect sincerity that he loved Nastasia Philipovna with all his soul; but in his love was included the sort of tenderness one feels for a sick child which cannot be left alone by itself to do as it likes.