Demons

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

a light shot through with darkness, but then there are spots even on the sun!

the reverence of provincial society even went so far as to resemble something sinful.

“One cannot love what one does not know,

As a chronicler I limit myself simply to presenting events in an exact way, exactly as they occurred, and it is not my fault if they appear incredible.

Disorder is bliss to you. Messiness is a delight!

You are very intelligent and learned, but you understand nothing of life,

Perhaps I agreed because I’m tired of life and it makes no difference to me.

he was unable to be without me even for two hours, needing me like water or air.

shared isolation is sometimes extremely damaging to true friendship.

all these gentlemen talents of the average sort, who are usually taken almost for geniuses in their lifetime, not only vanish from people’s memory almost without a trace and somehow suddenly when they die, but it happens that even in their lifetime, as soon as a new generation grows up to replace the one in whose time they were active—they are forgotten and scorned by everyone inconceivably quickly.

it was almost better than the truth!

Perhaps she made too severe demands on herself, never finding herself strong enough to satisfy them.

“Each man cannot judge except by himself,”

“There will be entire freedom when it makes no difference whether one lives or does not live. That is the goal to everything.”

Oh, if only there were no Sunday at all, and everything could go on as before:

“He’s not mad, but these people have short little thoughts,”

Consider it as verse and no more, for verse is nonsense after all and justifies what is considered boldness in prose.

Never in my life have I seen a more grim, gloomy, glowering face on a man. He looked as if he were expecting the destruction of the world, and not just sometime, according to prophecies which might not be fulfilled, but quite definitely, round about morning, the day after tomorrow, at ten twenty-five sharp.

‘we Russians are mere kids next to Americans, and that one must be born in America, or at least live for long years with Americans, to be on the same level with them.’

I don’t understand how it is that people are bored. Sorrow isn’t boredom.

‘God and nature are all the same.’

every earthly sorrow and every earthly tear is a joy for us; and when you have watered the earth under you a foot deep with your tears, then you will at once rejoice over everything. And there will be no more, no more of your grief from then on,’

swaying with the jolting of the carriage like a blade of grass in the wind.

God alone knows what’s hidden in men’s hearts,

even with a pure conscience you might commit some imprudence, not knowing the world;

“Have you, madam, ever suffered in your life?”

A trait of such people—this total incapacity to keep their desires to themselves; this uncontrollable urge, on the contrary, to reveal them at once, even in all their untidiness, the moment they arise.

Stepan Trofimovich was also trembling, but, on the contrary, because he was always inclined to understand everything to excess.

“This little word ‘why’ has been poured all over the universe since the very first day of creation, madam, and every moment the whole of nature cries out ‘Why?’ to its creator, and for seven thousand years4 has received no answer.

I’m only Lebyadkin, from lebed, the swan—why is that? I am a poet, a poet in my soul,

In my opinion Russia is a freak of nature, nothing else!”

“Why does everyone expect something of me that they don’t expect of others? Why should I take what no one else takes, and invite burdens that no one else can bear?”

I wanted to write back to you, but I’m no good at writing,”

“Nothing in the world ever ends.”

I never could discover what you wanted; it seems to me that you’re interested in me in the same way as certain antiquated sick-nurses for some reason take an interest in some one patient as opposed to all the others,

with a lead weight on his heart, and dull, unmoving despair in his soul.

spread before Andrei Antonovich, who had left the road, lay a stern landscape of bare fields from which the bread had been harvested long before; the howling wind swayed some pitiful remnants of dying yellow flowers … Did he wish to compare himself and his lot with stunted flowers beaten down by autumn and the frost?

can a sled that is already going down stop in the middle of the hillside?

He had the look of a man who has doomed himself to something like a certain death for the fatherland.

as though it were possible just to up and tell him one’s whole life over twenty-five years.

wrathful beforehand, wrathful out of jealousy, out of love:

She was like someone closing her eyes and throwing herself off a roof.

generally speaking, the Russian man is boundlessly amused by any socially scandalous commotion.

some of our Minervas can be partially forgiven for their befuddlement at the time.