Multi-column

The Brothers Karamazov

Thoughts

Highlights

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The seriousness of art is not the same as the seriousness of philosophy, or the seriousness of injustice. 🔗

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Life everywhere is life, life is in ourselves and not in the external. There will be people near me, and to be a human being among human beings, and remain one forever, no matter what misfortunes befall, not to become depressed, and not to falter—this is what life is, herein lies its task. 🔗

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in such moments one thirsts like “parched grass” for faith and finds it precisely because truth shines in misfortune. 🔗

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“each of us is guilty before all and for all,” 🔗

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Characters and ideas do not evolve or develop; they appear simultaneously, in a decisive moment. 🔗

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what he sought in the voicing of his characters was the singular expression of the person. He delighted in the richness of spoken language, its playfulness, its happy mistakes, its revealing quirks and peculiarities. 🔗

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“Life is full of the comic and is only majestic in its inner sense,” 🔗

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The comedy of style in the novel embodies movement and joy; it reveals the limits of language but also the freedom of language, one might almost say the freedom from language. 🔗

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precisely the type of man who is not only worthless and depraved but muddleheaded as well—one of those muddleheaded people who still handle their own little business deals quite skillfully 🔗

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a beautiful girl, too, and moreover one of those pert, intelligent girls not uncommon in this generation but sometimes also to be found in the last 🔗

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Fyodor Pavlovich at once began bustling about, making ready to go to Petersburg. Why? He, of course, had no idea. 🔗

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In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we. 🔗

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As a father he did precisely what was expected of him; that is, he totally and utterly abandoned his child by Adelaida Ivanovna, not out of malice towards him and not from any wounded matrimonial feelings, but simply because he totally forgot about him. 🔗

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Pyotr Alexandrovich Miusov 🔗

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Years later he used to recall, as typical of the man, that when he first began speaking about Mitya with Fyodor Pavlovich, the latter looked for a while as if he had no idea what child it was all about, and was even surprised, as it were, to learn that he had a little son somewhere in the house. 🔗

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The Moscow lady died and Mitya was passed on to one of her married daughters. 🔗

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He spent a disorderly adolescence and youth: he never finished high school; later he landed in some military school, then turned up in the Caucasus, was promoted, fought a duel, was broken to the ranks, promoted again, led a wild life, and spent, comparatively, a great deal of money. 🔗

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Fyodor Pavlovich saw at once (and this must be remembered) that Mitya had a false and inflated idea of his property. 🔗

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This very circumstance led to the catastrophe, an account of which forms the subject of my first introductory novel, or, better, the external side of it. 🔗

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Fyodor Pavlovich, though he led a wild, drunken, and debauched life, still never stopped investing his capital, and always managed his deals successfully, though of course almost always somewhat shabbily. 🔗

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what could a sixteen-year-old girl understand except that she would rather drown herself than stay with her benefactress. So the poor girl traded a benefactress for a benefactor. 🔗

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that the servant Grigory, a gloomy, stupid, and obstinate pedant, who had hated his former mistress, Adelaida Ivanovna, this time took the side of the new mistress 🔗

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Sofia Ivanovna was one of our “little orphans,” left without relations in early childhood, the daughter of some obscure deacon, who grew up in the rich house of her benefactress, mistress, and tormentress, an aristocratic old lady, 🔗

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They say that the moment she saw him, without any explanations, she at once delivered him two good, resounding slaps and jerked him three times by his forelock; then, without adding a word, she made straight for the cottage and the two boys. 🔗

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As for the slaps he had gotten, he drove all over town telling the story himself. 🔗

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If there was anyone to whom the brothers were indebted for their upbringing and education for the rest of their lives, it was to this Yefim Petrovich, a most generous and humane man, of a kind rarely found. 🔗

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of the elder, Ivan, I will only say that as he was growing up he was somehow gloomy and withdrawn, far from timid, but as if he had already perceived by the age of ten that they were indeed living in someone else’s family and on someone else’s charity, that their father was such that it was a shame to speak of him, and so on and so forth. 🔗

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plying them with ten-line articles on street incidents, signed “Eyewitness.” These little articles, they say, were always so curiously and quaintly written that they were soon in great demand; and even in this alone the young man demonstrated his practical and intellectual superiority over that eternally needy and miserable mass of our students of both sexes who, in our capitals, from morning till night, habitually haunt the doorways of various newspapers and magazines, unable to invent anything better than the eternal repetition of one and the same plea for copying work or translations from the French. 🔗

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it was strange that so learned, so proud, and seemingly so prudent a young man should suddenly appear in such a scandalous house, before such a father, who had ignored him all his life 🔗

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I will add that Ivan Fyodorovich seemed at the time to be a mediator and conciliator between his father and his elder brother, Dmitri Fyodorovich, who had gotten into a great quarrel with his father and had even started formal proceedings against him. 🔗

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Alyosha, was not at all a fanatic, and, in my view at least, even not at all a mystic. I will give my full opinion beforehand: he was simply an early lover of mankind,1 and if he threw himself into the monastery path, it was only because it alone struck him at the time and presented him, so to speak, with an ideal way out for his soul struggling from the darkness of worldly wickedness towards the light of love. 🔗

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Such memories can be remembered (everyone knows this) even from an earlier age, even from the age of two, but they only emerge throughout one’s life as specks of light, as it were, against the darkness, as a corner torn from a huge picture, which has all faded and disappeared except for that little corner. 🔗

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he remembered a quiet summer evening, an open window, the slanting rays of the setting sun (these slanting rays he remembered most of all), an icon in the corner of the room, a lighted oil-lamp in front of it, and before the icon, on her knees, his mother, sobbing as if in hysterics, with shrieks and cries, seizing him in her arms, hugging him so tightly that it hurt, and pleading for him to the Mother of God, holding him out from her embrace with both arms towards the icon, as if under the protection of the Mother of God … and suddenly a nurse rushes in and snatches him from her in fear. What a picture! 🔗

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he accepted everything without the least condemnation, though often with deep sadness. Moreover, in this sense he even went so far that no one could either surprise or frighten him 🔗

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everyone loved this young man wherever he appeared 🔗

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he possessed in himself, in his very nature, so to speak, artlessly and directly, the gift of awakening a special love for himself. 🔗

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He was seldom playful, seldom even merry, but anyone could see at once, at a glance, that this was not from any kind of sullenness, that, on the contrary, he was serene and even-tempered. He never wanted to show off in front of his peers. 🔗

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he was not at all proud of his fearlessness, but looked as if he did not realize that he was brave and fearless. 🔗

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external cynicism 🔗

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“Here, perhaps, is the only man in the world who, were you to leave him alone and without money on the square of some unknown city with a population of a million, would not perish, would not die of cold and hunger, for he would immediately be fed and immediately be taken care of, and if no one else took care of him, he would immediately take care of himself, and it would cost him no effort, and no humiliation, and he would be no burden to those who took care of him, who perhaps, on the contrary, would consider it a pleasure.” 🔗

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he himself did not know and would not at all have been able to explain what it was precisely that suddenly rose up in his soul and irresistibly drew him onto some sort of new, unknown, but already inevitable path. 🔗

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He was far from religious; the man probably had never put a five-kopek candle in front of an icon. Strange fits of sudden feelings and sudden thoughts come over such individuals. 🔗

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You see, stupid as I am, I still keep thinking about it, I keep thinking, every once in a while, of course, not all the time. Surely it’s impossible, I think, that the devils will forget to drag me down to their place with their hooks when I die. And then I think: hooks? Where do they get them? What are they made of? Iron? Where do they forge them? Have they got some kind of factory down there? 🔗

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Il faudrait les inventer,3 🔗

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Il faudrait les inventer: “They would have to be invented.” A variation of Voltaire’s Si Dieu n’existait pas , il faudrait l’inventer (“If God did not exist, he would have to be invented”). 🔗

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Alyosha was at that time a well-built, red-cheeked nineteen-year-old youth, clear-eyed and bursting with health. 🔗

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Some will say, perhaps, that red cheeks are quite compatible with both fanaticism and mysticism, but it seems to me that Alyosha was even more of a realist than the rest of us. 🔗

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miracles will never confound a realist. It is not miracles that bring a realist to faith. A true realist, if he is not a believer, will always find in himself the strength and ability not to believe in miracles as well, and if a miracle stands before him as an irrefutable fact, he will sooner doubt his own senses than admit the fact. And even if he does admit it, he will admit it as a fact of nature that was previously unknown to him. In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith. Once the realist comes to believe, then, precisely because of his realism, he must also allow for miracles. 🔗

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he set out upon this path only because at the time it alone struck him and presented him all at once with the whole ideal way out for his soul struggling from darkness to light. 🔗

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these young men do not understand that the sacrifice of life is, perhaps, the easiest of all sacrifices in many cases 🔗

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As soon as he reflected seriously and was struck by the conviction that immortality and God exist, he naturally said at once to himself: “I want to live for immortality, and I reject any halfway compromise.” In just the same way, if he had decided that immortality and God do not exist, he would immediately have joined the atheists and socialists (for socialism is not only the labor question or the question of the so-called fourth estate, but first of all the question of atheism, the question of the modern embodiment of atheism, the question of the Tower of Babel built precisely without God, not to go from earth to heaven but to bring heaven down to earth). 🔗

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What, then, is an elder? An elder is one who takes your soul, your will into his soul and into his will. Having chosen an elder, you renounce your will and give it to him under total obedience and with total self-renunciation. A man who dooms himself to this trial, this terrible school of life, does so voluntarily, in the hope that after the long trial he will achieve self-conquest, self-mastery to such a degree that he will, finally, through a whole life’s obedience, attain to perfect freedom—that is, freedom from himself—and avoid the lot of those who live their whole lives without finding themselves in themselves. 🔗

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elders are, in certain cases, granted a boundless and inconceivable power. 🔗

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It is also true, perhaps, that this tested and already thousand-year-old instrument for the moral regeneration of man from slavery to freedom and to moral perfection may turn into a double-edged weapon, which may lead a person not to humility and ultimate self-control but, on the contrary, to the most satanic pride—that is, to fetters and not to freedom. 🔗

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he sometimes astonished, perplexed, and almost frightened the visitor by this knowledge of his secret even before he had spoken a word. 🔗

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For Alyosha there was no question of why they loved him so much, why they prostrated before him and wept so tenderly just at the sight of his face. Oh, how well he understood that for the humble soul of the simple Russian, worn out by toil and grief, and, above all, by everlasting injustice and everlasting sin, his own and the world’s, there is no stronger need and consolation than to find some holy thing or person, to fall down before him and venerate him: “Though with us there is sin, unrighteousness, and temptation, still, all the same, there is on earth, in such and such a place, somewhere, someone holy and exalted; he has the truth; he knows the truth; so the truth does not die on earth, and therefore someday it will come to us and will reign over all the earth, as has been promised.” 🔗

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He knew perfectly well that his brother was an atheist. This contempt, if there were any, could not offend him, but still he was waiting with some sort of anxious puzzlement, which he himself did not understand, waiting for his brother to move closer to him. 🔗

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If any of these quarrelers and litigants could take such a council seriously, it was undoubtedly only his brother Dmitri. The rest would come with frivolous purposes, perhaps offensive to the elder—this Alyosha knew. His brother Ivan and Miusov would come out of curiosity, perhaps of the crudest sort, and his father, perhaps, for some buffoonery or theatrics. 🔗

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like all very distracted people, he would sometimes look directly at you, and for a long time, without seeing you at all. 🔗

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Only Petrusha Kalganov took a ten-kopeck piece from his purse and, embarrassed for some reason, hastily shoved it at one woman, saying quickly: “To be shared equally.” None of his companions said anything to him, so there was no point in his being embarrassed; which, when he noticed it, made him even more embarrassed. 🔗

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to show the deepest respect and tactfulness throughout the audience, the more so as there was no question of money involved, but only of love and mercy on one side, and on the other of repentance and the desire to resolve some difficult question of the soul or a difficult moment in the life of the heart. 🔗

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“Be at ease, and feel completely at home. And above all do not be so ashamed of yourself, for that is the cause of everything.” 🔗

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Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. 🔗

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the father of a lie, I always get my texts mixed up; let’s say the son of a lie 🔗

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Lamentations ease the heart only by straining and exacerbating it more and more. Such grief does not even want consolation; it is nourished by the sense of its unquenchableness. Lamentations are simply the need to constantly irritate the wound. 🔗

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“What are you weeping for?”
“I pity my little son, dear father, he was three years old, just three months short of three years old. 🔗

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But since I seem so cheerful to you, nothing could ever gladden me more than your saying so. For people are created for happiness, and he who is completely happy can at once be deemed worthy of saying to himself: ‘I have fulfilled God’s commandment on this earth.’ All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.” 🔗

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“No doubt it is devastating. One cannot prove anything here, but it is possible to be convinced.”
“How? By what?”
“By the experience of active love. Try to love your neighbors actively and tirelessly. The more you succeed in loving, the more you’ll be convinced of the existence of God and the immortality of your soul. And if you reach complete selflessness in the love of your neighbor, then undoubtedly you will believe, and no doubt will even be able to enter your soul. This has been tested. It is certain.” 🔗

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if there’s anything that would immediately cool my ‘active’ love for mankind, that one thing is ingratitude. In short, I work for pay and demand my pay at once, that is, praise and a return of love for my love. Otherwise I’m unable to love anyone!” 🔗

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He spoke just as frankly as you, humorously, but with a sorrowful humor. ‘I love mankind,’ he said, ‘but I am amazed at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular, that is, individually, as separate persons. 🔗

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‘On the other hand, it has always happened that the more I hate people individually, the more ardent becomes my love for humanity as a whole.’” 🔗

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I realize that indeed I was waiting only for you to praise my sincerity, when I told you that I couldn’t bear ingratitude. You’ve brought me back to myself, you’ve caught me out and explained me to myself!” 🔗

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for active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one’s life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and everyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and perseverance, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science. 🔗

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Thus (that is, for future purposes), it is not the Church that should seek a definite place for itself in the state, like ‘any social organization’ or ‘organization of men for religious purposes’ (as the author I was objecting to refers to the Church), but, on the contrary, every earthly state must eventually be wholly transformed into the Church and become nothing else but the Church, rejecting whichever of its aims are incompatible with those of the Church. 🔗

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“In short,” Father Paissy said again, stressing each word, “according to certain theories, which have become only too clear in our nineteenth century, the Church ought to be transforming itself into the state, from a lower to a higher species, as it were, so as to disappear into it eventually, making way for science, the spirit of the age, and civilization. And if it does not want that and offers resistance, then as a result it is allotted only a certain corner, as it were, in the state, and even that under control—as is happening in our time everywhere in modern European lands. Yet according to the Russian understanding and hope, it is not the Church that needs to be transformed into the state, as from a lower to a higher type, but, on the contrary, the state should end by being accounted worthy of becoming only the Church alone, and nothing else but that. And so be it, so be it!” 🔗

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“So far as I understand it, this, then, would be the realization of some ideal, an infinitely remote one, at the Second Coming. That is as you please. A beautiful utopian dream of the disappearance of wars, diplomats, banks, and so on. Something even resembling socialism. And here I was thinking you meant it all seriously, and that the Church might now, for instance, be judging criminals and sentencing them to flogging, hard labor, perhaps even capital punishment.” 🔗

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And if he returns to society, it is not seldom with such hatred that society itself, as it were, now excommunicates him. What will be the end of it, you may judge for yourselves. In many cases, it would appear to be the same with us; but the point is precisely that, besides the established courts, we have, in addition, the Church as well, which never loses communion with the criminal, as a dear and still beloved son, and above that there is preserved, even if only in thought, the judgment of the Church, not active now but still living for the future, if only as a dream, and unquestionably acknowledged by the criminal himself, by the instinct of his soul. 🔗

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“All this exile to hard labor, and formerly with floggings, does not reform anyone, and above all does not even frighten almost any criminal, and the number of crimes not only does not diminish but increases all the more. 🔗

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if the whole of society turned into the Church alone—then not only would the judgment of the Church influence the reformation of the criminal as it can never influence it now, but perhaps crimes themselves would indeed diminish at an incredible rate. And the Church, too, no doubt, would understand the future criminal and the future crime in many cases quite differently from now, and would be able to bring the excommunicated back, to deter the plotter, to regenerate the fallen. 🔗

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Father Paissy spoke sternly. “It is not the Church that turns into the state, you see. That is Rome and its dream. That is the third temptation of the devil7 But, on the contrary, the state turns into the Church, it rises up to the Church and becomes the Church over all the earth 🔗

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‘We are not, in fact, afraid of all these socialists, anarchists, atheists, and revolutionaries,’ he said. ‘We keep an eye on them, and their movements are known to us. But there are some special people among them, although not many: these are believers in God and Christians, and at the same time socialists. They are the ones we are most afraid of; they are terrible people! A socialist Christian is more dangerous than a socialist atheist.’ 🔗

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It is true that he was irritable by nature, “abrupt and erratic of mind,” 🔗

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Ivan Fyodorovich added parenthetically that that is what all natural law consists of, so that were mankind’s belief in its immortality to be destroyed, not only love but also any living power to continue the life of the world would at once dry up in it. Not only that, but then nothing would be immoral any longer, everything would be permitted, even anthropophagy. And even that is not all: he ended with the assertion that for every separate person, like ourselves for instance, who believes neither in God nor in his own immortality, the moral law of nature ought to change immediately into the exact opposite of the former religious law, and that egoism, even to the point of evildoing, should not only be permitted to man but should be acknowledged as the necessary, the most reasonable, and all but the noblest result of his situation. 🔗

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There is no virtue if there is no immortality.” 🔗

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“Let worldly men follow their dead with tears; here we rejoice over a departing father. 🔗

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And how is it that Ivan has seduced you all, that you’re all so in awe of him? He’s laughing at you: he’s sitting there in clover, relishing at your expense!” 🔗

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Another nota bene: our monastery never meant anything special in his life, and he had never shed any bitter tears because of it. But he was so carried away by his own sham tears that for a moment he almost believed himself; he even as much as wept from self-pity; but at the same moment he felt it was time to rein himself in. In reply to his wicked lie, the Superior inclined his head and again spoke imposingly:
“It is said, again: ‘Suffer with joy the dishonor which providentially befalleth thee, and be not troubled, neither hate him who dishonoreth thee.’ So shall we do.” 🔗

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What’s shame for the mind is beauty all over for the heart. Can there be beauty in Sodom? Believe me, for the vast majority of people, that’s just where beauty lies—did you know that secret? The terrible thing is that beauty is not only fearful but also mysterious. Here the devil is struggling with God, and the battlefield is the human heart. 🔗

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She was beautiful at that moment because she was noble, and I was a scoundrel; she was there in the majesty of her magnanimity and her sacrifice for her father, and I was a bedbug. And on me, a bedbug and a scoundrel, she depended entirely, all of her, all of her entirely, body and soul. 🔗

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“And if … ?”
“If there’s an if, I’ll kill. I couldn’t endure that.”
“Kill whom?”
“The old man. I wouldn’t kill her.”
“Brother, what are you saying!”
“I don’t know, I don’t know … Maybe I won’t kill him, and maybe I will. I’m afraid that at that moment his face will suddenly become hateful to me. I hate his Adam’s apple, his nose, his eyes, his shameless sneer. I feel a personal loathing. I’m afraid of that. I may not be able to help myself …” 🔗

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“Good for you, my dear! He’ll have some coffee. Shall we heat it up? Ah, no, it’s already boiling. Fine stuff, this coffee. Smerdyakovian! With coffee and cabbage pies, my Smerdyakov is an artist—yes, and with fish soup, too. Come for fish soup some time, let us know beforehand … But wait, wait, didn’t I tell you this morning to move back today with your mattress and pillows? Did you bring the mattress, heh, heh, heh?” 🔗

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“What is it?” asked Grigory, looking at him sternly from under his spectacles.
“Nothing, sir. The Lord God created light on the first day, and the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day.2 Where did the light shine from on the first day?” 🔗

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Only rarely did he speak. If at that time it had occurred to someone to ask, looking at him, what this fellow was interested in, and what was most often on his mind, it would really have been impossible to tell from looking at him. 🔗

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casuist 🔗

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let it be known to you, fool, that we here are unbelievers only out of carelessness, because we don’t have time: first, we’re too beset with business, and second, God gave us too little time, he only allotted twenty-four hours to a day, so that there isn’t even time enough to sleep, let alone repent. And you went and renounced your faith before your tormentors when you had nothing else to think about, and when it was precisely the time to show your faith! And so, my lad, isn’t that tantamount?” 🔗

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Because even if my back were already half flayed, that mountain still wouldn’t move at my word or cry. In such moments, you can not only get overcome by doubt, you can even lose your mind itself from fear, so it would be quite impossible to reason. And so, why should I come out looking so specially to blame, if, seeing no profit or reward either here or there, I at least keep my skin on? And therefore, trusting greatly in the mercy of God, I live in hopes that I’ll be completely forgiven, sir.” 🔗

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Because if there’s a God, if he exists, well, then of course I’m guilty and I’ll answer for it, but if there’s no God at all, then what do those fathers of yours deserve? It’s not enough just to cut off their heads—because they hold up progress. 🔗

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Alyosha, I never offended my little shrieker! Except once only, still in the first year: she was praying too much then, she especially kept the feasts of the Mother of God, and on those days she would drive me away from her to my study. I’d better knock this mysticism out of her, I thought. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘look, here’s your icon, here it is, I’m taking it down. Now watch. You think it’s a wonder-working icon, and right now, before your eyes, I’m going to spit on it, and nothing will happen to me … !’ When she saw that, Lord, I thought, now she’s going to kill me! But she just jumped up, clasped her hands, then suddenly covered her face with them, shook all over, and fell to the floor … just sank down … Alyosha! Alyosha! What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” 🔗

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is there a God or not? But seriously. I want to be serious now.”
“No, there is no God.”
“Alyoshka, is there a God?”
“There is.”
“And is there immortality, Ivan? At least some kind, at least a little, a teeny-tiny one?”
“There is no immortality either.”
“Not of any kind?”
“Not of any kind.”
“Complete zero? Or is there something? Maybe there’s some kind of something? At least not nothing!”
“Complete zero.”
“Alyoshka, is there immortality?”
“There is.”
“Both God and immortality?”
“Both God and immortality. Immortality is in God.”
“Hm. More likely Ivan is right. Lord, just think how much faith, how much energy of all kinds man has spent on this dream, and for so many thousands of years! Who could be laughing at man like that? Ivan? For the last time, definitely: is there a God or not? It’s the last time I’ll ask.”
“For the last time—no.”
“Then who is laughing at mankind, Ivan?”
“Must be the devil,” Ivan smirked.
“And is there a devil?”
“No, there is no devil, either.”
“Too bad. Devil knows, then, what I wouldn’t do to the man who first invented God! Hanging from the bitter aspen tree would be too good for him.”
“There would be no civilization at all if God had not been invented.”
“There wouldn’t? Without God?”
“Right. And there would be no cognac either. But even so, we’ll have to take your cognac away from you.”
“Wait, wait, wait, my dear, one more little glass. I offended Alyosha. You’re not angry with me, Alexei? My dear Alexeichik, my Alexeichik!”
“No, I’m not angry. I know your thoughts. Your heart is better than your head.” 🔗

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“Catch him!” shrieked Fyodor Pavlovich the moment he sighted Dmitri again. “He’s stolen money in there, from my bedroom!”
And breaking away from Ivan, he again rushed at Dmitri. But Dmitri raised both hands and suddenly seized the old man by the two surviving wisps of hair on his temples, pulled, and smashed him against the floor. He even had time to kick the fallen man in the face two or three times with his heel. The old man let out a shrill moan. Ivan Fyodorovich, though not as strong as his brother Dmitri, grasped him with both arms and tore him with all his might away from the old man. Alyosha, too, helped with his small strength, grasping his brother from the front.
“Madman, you’ve killed him!” shouted Ivan. 🔗

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“Brother, let me ask you one more thing: can it be that any man has the right to decide about the rest of mankind, who is worthy to live and who is more unworthy?”
“But why bring worth into it? The question is most often decided in the hearts of men not at all on the basis of worth, but for quite different reasons, much more natural ones. As for rights, tell me, who has no right to wish?”
“But surely not for another’s death?”
“Maybe even for another’s death. Why lie to yourself when everyone lives like that, and perhaps even cannot live any other way? What are you getting at—what I said about ‘two vipers eating each other up’? 🔗

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Why, then, does he still not know how much I can endure for him? Why, why does he not know me, how dare he not know me after all that has happened? I want to save him forever. Let him forget that I am his fiancée! And now he’s afraid before me because of his honor! He wasn’t afraid to open himself to you, Alexei Fyodorovich. Why haven’t I yet deserved the same?” 🔗

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“Do you know, my angel,” she suddenly drawled in the most tender, sugary voice, “do you know? I’m just not going to kiss your hand.” And she laughed a gleeful little laugh.
“As you wish … What’s the matter?” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly started.
“And you can keep this as a memory—that you kissed my hand, and I did not kiss yours.” Something suddenly flashed in her eyes. She looked with terrible fixity at Katerina Ivanovna.
“Insolent!” Katerina Ivanovna said suddenly, as if suddenly understanding something. She blushed all over and jumped up from her place. Grushenka, too, got up, without haste.
“So I’ll go right now and tell Mitya that you kissed my hand, and I didn’t kiss yours at all. How he’ll laugh!” 🔗

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I just told you everything, but this I did not tell you, because even I am not so brazen! I could still stop; if I stopped, tomorrow I could recover fully half of my lost honor; but I will not stop, I will carry out my base design, and in the future you can be my witness that I told you beforehand and with aforethought! Darkness and ruin! There’s nothing to explain, you’ll learn it all in due time. A stinking back lane and an infernal woman! Farewell. Don’t pray for me, I’m not worthy of it, and it’s unnecessary, quite unnecessary … I don’t need it at all! Away!” 🔗

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wrote, “I am writing to you in secret from everyone, from mama, too, and I know how wrong it is. But I cannot live any longer without telling you what has been born in my heart, and this no one but the two of us should know for the time being. But how shall I tell you that which I want so much to tell you? Paper, they say, does not blush, but I assure you that it is not true, and that it is blushing now just as I am blushing all over. Dear Alyosha, I love you, I have loved you ever since childhood, in Moscow, when you were nothing like you are now, and I shall love you all my life. I have chosen you with my heart, to be united with you, and to end our life together in old age. 🔗

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“I shall surely cry today. Till tomorrow, till that terrible morrow. Lise. 🔗

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Alyosha read the note with surprise, read it a second time, thought a moment, and suddenly laughed softly and sweetly. Then he gave a start; this laughter seemed sinful to him. But a moment later he laughed again just as softly and happily. He slowly put the note into the little envelope, crossed himself, and lay down. The confusion in his soul suddenly passed. “Lord have mercy on them all today, unhappy and stormy as they are, preserve and guide them. All ways are yours: save them according to your ways. You are love, you will send joy to all!” Alyosha murmured, crossing himself and falling into a serene sleep. 🔗

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But when he knows that he is not only worse than all those in the world, but is also guilty before all people, on behalf of all and for all,2 for all human sins, the world’s and each person’s, only then will the goal of our unity be achieved. For you must know, my dear ones, that each of us is undoubtedly guilty on behalf of all and for all on earth, not only because of the common guilt of the world, but personally, each one of us, for all people and for each person on this earth. This knowledge is the crown of the monk’s path, and of every man’s path on earth. 🔗

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the science of this world, having united itself into a great force, has, especially in the past century, examined everything heavenly that has been bequeathed to us in sacred books, and, after hard analysis, the learned ones of this world have absolutely nothing left of what was once holy. But they have examined parts and missed the whole, and their blindness is even worthy of wonder. Meanwhile the whole stands before their eyes as immovably as ever, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.11 🔗

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I want to live in my wickedness to the very end. Wickedness is sweet: everyone denounces it, but everyone lives in it, only they all do it on the sly and I do it openly. And for this ingenuousness of mine, the wicked ones all attack me. And I don’t want your paradise, Alexei Fyodorovich, let it be known to you; it’s even unfitting for a decent man to go to your paradise, if there really is such a place. I say a man falls asleep and doesn’t wake up, and that’s all; remember me in your prayers if you want to, and if not, the devil take you. That’s my philosophy. 🔗

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“Ah, these caprices of yours, Lise, your fickleness, your illness, this terrible night of fever, this terrible and eternal Herzenstube most of all, eternal, eternal, eternal! And, then, everything, everything … And then even this miracle! Oh, how it struck me, how it shook me, this miracle, dear Alexei Fyodorovich! And now this tragedy there in the drawing room, which I cannot bear, I cannot, I declare to you beforehand that I cannot! A comedy, perhaps, not a tragedy. Tell me, the elder Zosima will live until tomorrow, won’t he? Oh, my God! What is happening to me? I close my eyes every moment and see that it’s all nonsense, all nonsense.” 🔗

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“Not at all. As soon as I read it, I thought at once that that was how everything would be, because as soon as the elder Zosima dies, I must immediately leave the monastery. Then I’ll finish my studies and pass the exam, and when the legal time comes, we’ll get married. I will love you. Though I haven’t had much time to think yet, I don’t think I could find a better wife than you, and the elder told me to get married …” 🔗

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Alyosha sensed by some sort of instinct that a character like Katerina Ivanovna must rule, and that she could only rule over a man like Dmitri, but by no means over a man like Ivan. For only Dmitri (in the long run, let us say) might finally submit to her “for his own happiness” (which Alyosha even desired), but not Ivan, Ivan could not submit to her, and such submission would not bring him happiness. Such was the notion that Alyosha had somehow involuntarily formed of Ivan. 🔗

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One could get completely lost in this tangle, and Alyosha’s heart could not bear uncertainty, for the nature of his love was always active. He could not love passively; once he loved, he immediately also began to help. And for that one had to have a goal, one had to know firmly what was good and needful for each of them, and becoming firmly convinced of the correctness of the goal, naturally also to help each of them. But instead of a firm goal there was only vagueness and confusion in everything. “Strain” had just been uttered! But what could he understand even of this strain? He did not understand the first thing in all this tangle! 🔗

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“But only for this moment … And what is this moment? Just yesterday’s insult—that’s all it is!” 🔗

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in another woman this moment would be only yesterday’s impression, and no more than a moment, but with Katerina Ivanovna’s character, this moment will last all her life. What for others would be just a promise, for her is an everlasting, heavy, perhaps grim, but unfailing, duty. And she will be nourished by this feeling of fulfilled duty! Your life, Katerina Ivanovna, will now be spent in the suffering contemplation of your own feelings, of your own high deed and your own grief, but later this suffering will mellow, and your life will then turn into the sweet contemplation of a firm and proud design, fulfilled once and for all, truly proud in its own way, and desperate in any case, but which you have carried through, and this awareness will finally bring you the most complete satisfaction and will reconcile you to all the rest …” 🔗

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“Call Dmitri now—I’ll go and find him—and let him come here and take you by the hand, and then take my brother Ivan by the hand, and let him unite your hands. For you are tormenting Ivan only because you love him … and you are tormenting him because you love Dmitri from strain … not in truth
. . because you’ve convinced yourself of it …” 🔗

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I am leaving now; but know, Katerina Ivanovna, that you indeed love only him. And the more he insults you, the more you love him. That is your strain. You precisely love him as he is, you love him insulting you. If he reformed, you would drop him at once and stop loving him altogether. But you need him in order to continually contemplate your high deed of faithfulness, and to reproach him for his unfaithfulness. And it all comes from your pride. 🔗

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He was indeed in real grief, of a kind he had seldom experienced before. He had gone and “put his foot in it”—and in what? An affair of the heart! “But what do I know of that, what kind of judge am I in such matters?” he repeated to himself for the hundredth time, blushing. 🔗

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Time was passing: the thought of the dying elder had never left him, not for a minute, not for a second, from the moment he left the monastery. 🔗

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“He will ask your forgiveness, he will bow at your feet in the middle of the square,” Alyosha again cried, his eyes glowing. 🔗

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he said, ‘papa, challenge him to a duel; they tease me at school, they say you’re a coward and won’t challenge him to a duel, but you’ll take his ten roubles. ’ ‘It’s not possible for me to challenge him to a duel, Ilyusha,’ I answered, and explained to him briefly all that I just explained to you about that. He listened. ‘Papa,’ he said, ‘papa, even so, don’t make peace with him: I’ll grow up, I’ll challenge him myself, and I’ll kill him!’ And his eyes were flashing and shining. Well, I’m still his father for all that, I had to tell him the right thing. ‘It’s sinful to kill,’ I said, ‘even in a duel.’ 🔗

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He rushed to me suddenly, threw his little arms around my neck, and hugged me. You know, when children are silent and proud, and have been holding back their tears for a long time, when they suddenly burst out, if a great grief comes, the tears don’t just flow, sir, they pour out in streams. With these warm streams he suddenly wet my whole face. He suddenly sobbed as if he were in convulsions, and began shaking and pressing me to him as I sat there on the stone. ‘Papa,’ he cried, ‘papa, dear papa, how he humiliated you!’ Then I began weeping, too, sir. 🔗

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“And what would I tell my boy, if I took money from you for our disgrace?” And having said this, he broke into a run, this time without turning around. Alyosha looked after him with inexpressible sadness. Oh, he understood that the captain had not known until the very last moment that he would crumple the bills and fling them down. The running man did not once look back, and Alyosha knew that he would not look back. He did not want to pursue him or call out to him, and he knew why. When the captain was out of sight, Alyosha picked up the two bills. 🔗

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it’s terribly difficult for an offended man when everyone suddenly starts looking like his benefactor … I knew that; the elder told me so. I don’t know how to put it, but I’ve noticed it often myself. And I feel exactly the same way. And above all, though he didn’t know until the very last minute that he would trample on the bills, he did anticipate it, he must have. That’s what made his delight so intense, because he anticipated … And so, though this is all so bad, it’s still for the better. I even think that it’s for the best, that it even could not be better 🔗

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if he had taken the money instead of trampling on it, he’d have gone home, and within an hour he’d have been weeping over his humiliation—that’s certainly what would have happened. He would weep, and perhaps tomorrow, at the first light, he would come to me, and maybe throw the bills at me and trample on them as he did today. But now he’s gone off feeling terribly proud and triumphant, though he knows that he’s ‘ruined himself. ’ And so nothing could be easier now than to get him to accept these same two hundred roubles, maybe even tomorrow, because he has already proved his honor, thrown down the money, trampled on it 🔗

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above all, he must be convinced that he is on an equal footing with all of us, in spite of his taking money from us,” Alyosha continued in his rapture, “and not only on an equal but even on a greater footing 🔗

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Consider, what contempt can there be if we ourselves are just the same as he is, if everyone is just the same as he is? Because we are just the same, not better. And even if we were better, we would still be the same in his place … I don’t know about you, Lise, but for myself I consider that my soul is petty in many ways. And his is not petty, on the contrary, it is very sensitive … No, Lise, there is no contempt for him! 🔗

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“Alyosha, give me your hand, why are you taking it away?” Lise said in a voice somehow flat, weakened from happiness. “Listen, Alyosha, what are you going to wear when you leave the monastery, what kind of clothes? Don’t laugh, don’t be angry, it’s very, very important for me.”
“I haven’t thought about clothes yet, Lise, but I’ll wear whatever you like.”
“I want you to have a dark blue velvet jacket, a white piqué waistcoat, and a gray soft felt hat … Tell me, did you really believe that I didn’t love you this morning, when I renounced my letter from yesterday?”
“No, I didn’t believe it.” 🔗

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“And, look, maybe I don’t even believe in God.”
“You don’t believe? What’s the matter with you?” Lise asked softly and cautiously. But Alyosha did not answer. There was, in these too-sudden words, something too mysterious and too subjective, perhaps not clear to himself, but that undoubtedly tormented him. 🔗

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“I do love you, Ivan. Our brother Dmitri says of you: Ivan is a grave. I say: Ivan is a riddle. You are still a riddle to me, but I’ve already understood something about you, though only since this morning!”
“What is it?” Ivan laughed.
“You won’t be angry?” Alyosha laughed, too.
“Well?”
“That you are just a young man, exactly like all other young men of twenty-three—yes, a young, very young, fresh and nice boy, still green, in fact! Well, are you very offended?” 🔗

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it’s a feature of the Karamazovs, to some extent, this thirst for life despite all; 🔗

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If I did not believe in life, if I were to lose faith in the woman I love, if I were to lose faith in the order of things, even if I were to become convinced, on the contrary, that everything is a disorderly, damned, and perhaps devilish chaos, if I were struck even by all the horrors of human disillusionment—still I would want to live, and as long as I have bent to this cup, I will not tear myself from it until I’ve drunk it all! However, by the age of thirty, I will probably drop the cup, even if I haven’t emptied it, and walk away … I don’t know where. 🔗

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Sticky spring leaves, the blue sky—I love them, that’s all! Such things you love not with your mind, not with logic, but with your insides, your guts, you love your first young strength 🔗

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Alyosha exclaimed. “I think that everyone should love life before everything else in the world.”
“Love life more than its meaning?”
“Certainly, love it before logic, as you say, certainly before logic, and only then will I also understand its meaning. That is how I’ve long imagined it. Half your work is done and acquired, Ivan: you love life. Now you need only apply yourself to the second half, and you are saved.” 🔗

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“So you know yourself what for. Some people need one thing, but we green youths need another, we need first of all to resolve the everlasting questions, that is what concerns us. All of young Russia is talking now only about the eternal questions. Precisely now, just when all the old men have suddenly gotten into practical questions. Why have you been looking at me so expectantly for these three months? In order to ask me: ‘And how believest thou, if thou believest anything at all?’4 🔗

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How have Russian boys handled things up to now? Some of them, that is. Take, for instance, some stinking local tavern. They meet there and settle down in a corner. They’ve never seen each other before in their whole lives, and when they walk out of the tavern, they won’t see each other again for forty years. Well, then, what are they going to argue about, seizing this moment in the tavern? About none other than the universal questions: is there a God, is there immortality? And those who do not believe in God, well, they will talk about socialism and anarchism, about transforming the whole of mankind according to a new order, but it’s the same damned thing, the questions are all the same, only from the other end. And many, many of the most original Russian boys do nothing but talk about the eternal questions, now, in our time. 🔗

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You see, my dear, there was in the eighteenth century an old sinner who stated that if God did not exist, he would have to be invented: S’il n’existait pas Dieu, il faudrait l’inventer.5 And man has, indeed, invented God. And the strange thing, the wonder would not be that God really exists, the wonder is that such a notion—the notion of the necessity of God—could creep into the head of such a wild and wicked animal as man—so holy, so moving, so wise a notion, which does man such great honor. As for me, I long ago decided not to think about whether man created God or God created man. 🔗

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What task are you and I faced with now? My task is to explain to you as quickly as possible my essence, that is, what sort of man I am, what I believe in, and what I hope for, is that right? And therefore I declare that I accept God pure and simple. But this, however, needs to be noted: if God exists and if he indeed created the earth, then, as we know perfectly well, he created it in accordance with Euclidean geometry, and he created human reason with a conception of only three dimensions of space. At the same time there were and are even now geometers and philosophers, even some of the most outstanding among them, who doubt that the whole universe, or, even more broadly, the whole of being, was created purely in accordance with Euclidean geometry; they even dare to dream that two parallel lines, which according to Euclid cannot possibly meet on earth, may perhaps meet somewhere in infinity. I, my dear, have come to the conclusion that if I cannot understand even that, then it is not for me to understand about God. I humbly confess that I do not have any ability to resolve such questions, I have a Euclidean mind, an earthly mind, and therefore it is not for us to resolve things that are not of this world. And I advise you never to think about it, Alyosha my friend, and most especially about whether God exists or not. All such questions are completely unsuitable to a mind created with a concept of only three dimensions. And so, I accept God, not only willingly, but moreover I also accept his wisdom and his purpose, which are completely unknown to us; I believe in order, in the meaning of life, I believe in eternal harmony, in which we are all supposed to merge, I believe in the Word for whom the universe is yearning, and who himself was ‘with God,’ who himself is God, and so on, and so on and so forth, to infinity.6 🔗

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And now imagine that in the final outcome I do not accept this world of God’s, I do not admit it at all, though I know it exists. It’s not God that I do not accept, you understand, it is this world of God’s, created by God, that I do not accept and cannot agree to accept. With one reservation: I have a childlike conviction that the sufferings will be healed and smoothed over, that the whole offensive comedy of human contradictions will disappear like a pitiful mirage, a vile concoction of man’s Euclidean mind, feeble and puny as an atom, and that ultimately, at the world’s finale, in the moment of eternal harmony, there will occur and be revealed something so precious that it will suffice for all hearts, to allay all indignation, to redeem all human villainy, all bloodshed; it will suffice not only to make forgiveness possible, but also to justify everything that has happened with men—let this, let all of this come true and be revealed, but I do not accept it and do not want to accept it! Let the parallel lines even meet before my own eyes: I shall look and say, yes, they meet, and still I will not accept it. That is my essence, Alyosha, that is my thesis. 🔗

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the stupider, the more to the point. The stupider, the clearer. Stupidity is brief and guileless, while reason hedges and hides. Reason is a scoundrel, stupidity is direct and honest. I brought the case around to my despair, and the more stupidly I’ve presented it, the more it’s to my advantage.” 🔗

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If we’re to come to love a man, the man himself should stay hidden, because as soon as he shows his face—love vanishes.” 🔗

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In my opinion, Christ’s love for people is in its kind a miracle impossible on earth. True, he was God. But we are not gods. Let’s say that I, for example, am capable of profound suffering, but another man will never be able to know the degree of my suffering, because he is another and not me, and besides, a man is rarely willing to acknowledge someone else as a sufferer (as if it were a kind of distinction). And why won’t he acknowledge it, do you think? Because I, for example, have a bad smell, or a foolish face, or once stepped on his foot. Besides, there is suffering and suffering: some benefactor of mine may still allow a humiliating suffering, which humiliates me—hunger, for example; but a slightly higher suffering—for an idea, for example—no, that he will not allow, save perhaps on rare occasions, because he will look at me and suddenly see that my face is not at all the kind of face that, he fancies, a man should have who suffers, for example, for such and such an idea. And so he at once deprives me of his benefactions, and not even from the wickedness of his heart. Beggars, especially noble beggars, should never show themselves in the street; they should ask for alms through the newspapers. It’s still possible to love one’s neighbor abstractly, and even occasionally from a distance, but hardly ever up close. If it were all as it is on stage, in a ballet, where beggars, when they appear, come in silken rags and tattered lace and ask for alms dancing gracefully, well, then it would still be possible to admire them. To admire, but still not to love. 🔗

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But, first, one can love children even up close, even dirty or homely children (it seems to me, however, that children are never homely). Second, I will not speak of grown-ups because, apart from the fact that they are disgusting and do not deserve love, they also have retribution: they ate the apple, and knew good and evil, and became ‘as gods.’2 And they still go on eating it. But little children have not eaten anything and are not yet guilty of anything. 🔗

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people speak sometimes about the ‘animal’ cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to animals, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel. A tiger simply gnaws and tears, that is all he can do. It would never occur to him to nail people by their ears overnight, even if he were able to do it. 🔗

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But here is a picture that I found very interesting. Imagine a nursing infant in the arms of its trembling mother, surrounded by Turks. They’ve thought up an amusing trick: they fondle the baby, they laugh to make it laugh, and they succeed—the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk aims a pistol at it, four inches from its face. The baby laughs gleefully, reaches out its little hands to grab the pistol, and suddenly the artist pulls the trigger right in its face and shatters its little head … Artistic, isn’t it? 🔗

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“I think that if the devil does not exist, and man has therefore created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.”
“As well as God, then.” 🔗

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And so the last day came. Limp Richard weeps and all the while keeps repeating: ‘This is the best day of my life, I am going to the Lord!’ ‘Yes,’ cry the pastors, the judges, and the philanthropic ladies, ‘this is your happiest day, for you are going to the Lord!’ And it’s all moving towards the scaffold, in carriages and on foot, following the cart of shame that is bearing Richard. They arrive at the scaffold. ‘Die, brother,’ they call out to Richard, ‘die in the Lord, for grace has descended upon you, too!’ 🔗

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I know for certain that there are floggers who get more excited with every stroke, to the point of sensuality, literal sensuality, more and more, progressively, with each new stroke. They flog for one minute, they flog for five minutes, they flog for ten minutes—longer, harder, faster, sharper. 🔗

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I positively maintain that this peculiar quality exists in much of mankind—this love of torturing children, but only children. These same torturers look upon all other examples of humankind even mildly and benevolently, being educated and humane Europeans, but they have a great love of torturing children, they even love children in that sense. It is precisely the defenselessness of these creatures that tempts the torturers, the angelic trustfulness of the child, who has nowhere to turn and no one to turn to—that is what enflames the vile blood of the torturer. There is, of course, a beast hidden in every man, a beast of rage, a beast of sensual inflammability at the cries of the tormented victim, an unrestrained beast let off the chain, a beast of diseases acquired in debauchery—gout, rotten liver, and so on. 🔗

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can you understand such nonsense, my friend and my brother, my godly and humble novice, can you understand why this nonsense is needed and created? Without it, they say, man could not even have lived on earth, for he would not have known good and evil. Who wants to know this damned good and evil at such a price? The whole world of knowledge is not worth the tears of that little child to ‘dear God.’ I’m not talking about the suffering of grown-ups, they ate the apple and to hell with them, let the devil take them all, but these little ones! 🔗

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what to do with him? Shoot him? Shoot him for our moral satisfaction? Speak, Alyoshka!”
“Shoot him!” Alyosha said softly, looking up at his brother with a sort of pale, twisted smile.
“Bravo!” Ivan yelled in a sort of rapture. “If even you say so, then … A fine monk you are! See what a little devil is sitting in your heart, Alyoshka Karamazov!”
“What I said is absurd, but …”
“That’s just it, that ‘but … . ,’”Ivan was shouting.”I tell you, novice, that absurdities are all too necessary on earth. The world stands on absurdities, and without them perhaps nothing at all would happen. We know what we know!” 🔗

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“I don’t understand anything,” Ivan went on as if in delirium, “and I no longer want to understand anything. I want to stick to the fact. I made up my mind long ago not to understand. If I wanted to understand something, I would immediately have to betray the fact, but I’ve made up my mind to stick to the fact …” 🔗

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I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion,11 and the murdered man rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly finds out what it was all for. All religions in the world are based on this desire, and I am a believer. 🔗

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And while I am on earth, I hasten to take my own measures. You see, Alyosha, it may well be that if I live until that moment, or rise again in order to see it, I myself will perhaps cry out with all the rest, looking at the mother embracing her child’s tormentor: ‘Just art thou, O Lord!’ but I do not want to cry out with them. While there’s still time, I hasten to defend myself against it, and therefore I absolutely renounce all higher harmony. It is not worth one little tear of even that one tormented child who beat her chest with her little fist and prayed to ‘dear God’ in a stinking outhouse with her unredeemed tears! Not worth it, because her tears remained unredeemed. They must be redeemed, otherwise there can be no harmony. 🔗

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But how, how will you redeem them? Is it possible? Can they be redeemed by being avenged? But what do I care if they are avenged, what do I care if the tormentors are in hell, what can hell set right here, if these ones have already been tormented? And where is the harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive, and I want to embrace, I don’t want more suffering. And if the suffering of children goes to make up the sum of suffering needed to buy truth, then I assert beforehand that the whole of truth is not worth such a price. 🔗

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if they dare not forgive, then where is the harmony? Is there in the whole world a being who could and would have the right to forgive? I don’t want harmony, for love of mankind I don’t want it. I want to remain with unrequited suffering. I’d rather remain with my unrequited suffering and my unquenched indignation, even if I am wrong. Besides, they have put too high a price on harmony; we can’t afford to pay so much for admission. And therefore I hasten to return my ticket.13 And it is my duty, if only as an honest man, to return it as far ahead of time as possible. Which is what I am doing. It’s not that I don’t accept God, Alyosha, I just most respectfully return him the ticket.”
“That is rebellion,” Alyosha said softly, dropping his eyes. 🔗

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Tell me straight out, I call on you—answer me: imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny creature, that same child who was beating her chest with her little fist, and raise your edifice on the foundation of her unrequited tears—would you agree to be the architect on such conditions? Tell me the truth.”
“No, I would not agree,” Alyosha said softly.
“And can you admit the idea that the people for whom you are building would agree to accept their happiness on the unjustified blood of a tortured child, and having accepted it, to remain forever happy?”
“No, I cannot admit it. Brother,” Alyosha said suddenly, his eyes beginning to flash, “you asked just now if there is in the whole world a being who could and would have the right to forgive. But there is such a being, and he can forgive everything, forgive all and for all,14because he himself gave his innocent blood for all and for everything. You’ve forgotten about him, but it is on him that the structure is being built, and it is to him that they will cry out: ‘Just art thou, O Lord, for thy ways have been revealed!’”
“Ah, yes, the ‘only sinless One’15and his blood! No, I have not forgotten about him; on the contrary, I’ve been wondering all the while why you hadn’t brought him up for so long, because in discussions your people usually trot him out first thing. 🔗

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No science will give them bread as long as they remain free, but in the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us: “Better that you enslave us, but feed us.” They will finally understand that freedom and earthly bread in plenty for everyone are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share among themselves. They will also be convinced that they are forever incapable of being free, because they are feeble, depraved, nonentities and rebels. 🔗

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My action is set in Spain, in Seville, in the most horrible time of the Inquisition, when fires blazed every day to the glory of God 🔗

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People are drawn to him by an invincible force, they flock to him, surround him, follow him. He passes silently among them with a quiet smile of infinite compassion. The sun of love shines in his heart, rays of Light, Enlightenment, and Power stream from his eyes and, pouring over the people, shake their hearts with responding love. 🔗

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Why, then, have you come to interfere with us? For you have come to interfere with us and you know it yourself. But do you know what will happen tomorrow? I do not know who you are, and I do not want to know: whether it is you, or only his likeness; but tomorrow I shall condemn you and burn you at the stake as the most evil of heretics, and the very people who today kissed your feet, tomorrow, at a nod from me, will rush to heap the coals up around your stake, do you know that? Yes, perhaps you do know it 🔗

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‘Everything,’ they say, ‘has been handed over by you to the pope, therefore everything now belongs to the pope, and you may as well not come at all now, or at least don’t interfere with us for the time being.’ 🔗

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‘but we have finally finished this work in your name. For fifteen hundred years we have been at pains over this freedom, but now it is finished, and well finished. You do not believe that it is well finished? 🔗

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“You want to go into the world, and you are going empty-handed, with some promise of freedom, which they in their simplicity and innate lawlessness cannot even comprehend, which they dread and fear—for nothing has ever been more insufferable for man and for human society than freedom! But do you see these stones in this bare, scorching desert? Turn them into bread and mankind will run after you like sheep, grateful and obedient, though eternally trembling lest you withdraw your hand and your loaves cease for them.” But you did not want to deprive man of freedom and rejected the offer, for what sort of freedom is it, you reasoned, if obedience is bought with loaves of bread? 🔗

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“Feed them first, then ask virtue of them!” 🔗

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if in the name of heavenly bread thousands and tens of thousands will follow you, what will become of the millions and tens of thousands of millions of creatures who will not be strong enough to forgo earthly bread for the sake of the heavenly? Is it that only the tens of thousands of the great and strong are dear to you, and the remaining millions, numerous as the sands of the sea, weak but loving you, should serve only as material for the great and the strong? No, the weak, too, are dear to us. They are depraved and rebels, but in the end it is they who will become obedient. They will marvel at us, and look upon us as gods, because we, standing at their head, have agreed to suffer freedom and to rule over them—so terrible will it become for them in the end to be free! But we shall say that we are obedient to you and rule in your name. We shall deceive them again, for this time we shall not allow you to come to us. This deceit will constitute our suffering, for we shall have to lie. 🔗

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Had you accepted the “loaves,” you would have answered the universal and everlasting anguish of man as an individual being, and of the whole of mankind together, namely: “before whom shall I bow down?” There is no more ceaseless or tormenting care for man, as long as he remains free, than to find someone to bow down to as soon as possible. 🔗

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And this need for communality of worship is the chief torment of each man individually, and of mankind as a whole, from the beginning of the ages. In the cause of universal worship, they have destroyed each other with the sword. They have made gods and called upon each other: “Abandon your gods and come and worship ours, otherwise death to you and your gods!” And so it will be until the end of the world, even when all gods have disappeared from the earth: they will still fall down before idols. 🔗

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you rejected the only absolute banner, which was offered to you to make all men bow down to you indisputably—the banner of earthly bread; and you rejected it in the name of freedom and heavenly bread. 🔗

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But if at the same time someone else takes over his conscience—oh, then he will even throw down your bread and follow him who has seduced his conscience. In this you were right. For the mystery of man’s being is not only in living, but in what one lives for. Without a firm idea of what he lives for, man will not consent to live and will sooner destroy himself than remain on earth, even if there is bread all around him. 🔗

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Did you forget that peace and even death are dearer to man than free choice in the knowledge of good and evil? There is nothing more seductive for man than the freedom of his conscience, but there is nothing more tormenting either. 🔗

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man had henceforth to decide for himself, with a free heart, what is good and what is evil, having only your image before him as a guide—but did it not occur to you that he would eventually reject and dispute even your image and your truth if he was oppressed by so terrible a burden as freedom of choice? 🔗

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you yourself laid the foundation for the destruction of your own kingdom, and do not blame anyone else for it. Yet is this what was offered you? There are three powers, only three powers on earth, capable of conquering and holding captive forever the conscience of these feeble rebels, for their own happiness—these powers are miracle, mystery, and authority. You rejected the first, the second, and the third, and gave yourself as an example of that. 🔗

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And since man cannot bear to be left without miracles, he will go and create new miracles for himself, his own miracles this time, and will bow down to the miracles of quacks, or women’s magic, though he be rebellious, heretical, and godless a hundred times over. You did not come down from the cross when they shouted to you, mocking and reviling you: “Come down from the cross and we will believe that it is you.”25 You did not come down because, again, you did not want to enslave man by a miracle and thirsted for faith that is free, not miraculous. You thirsted for love that is free, and not for the servile raptures of a slave before a power that has left him permanently terrified. 🔗

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you hoped that, following you, man, too, would remain with God, having no need of miracles. But you did not know that as soon as man rejects miracles, he will at once reject God as well, for man seeks not so much God as miracles. And since man cannot bear to be left without miracles, he will go and create new miracles for himself, his own miracles this time, and will bow down to the miracles of quacks, or women’s magic, though he be rebellious, heretical, and godless a hundred times over. You did not come down from the cross when they shouted to you, mocking and reviling you: “Come down from the cross and we will believe that it is you.”25 You did not come down because, again, you did not want to enslave man by a miracle and thirsted for faith that is free, not miraculous. You thirsted for love that is free, and not for the servile raptures of a slave before a power that has left him permanently terrified. But here, too, you overestimated mankind, for, of course, they are slaves, though they were created rebels. 🔗

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And so, turmoil, confusion, and unhappiness—these are the present lot of mankind, after you suffered so much for their freedom! 🔗

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What of the rest? Is it the fault of the rest of feeble mankind that they could not endure what the mighty endured? Is it the fault of the weak soul that it is unable to contain such terrible gifts? Can it be that you indeed came only to the chosen ones and for the chosen ones? But if so, there is a mystery here, and we cannot understand it. And if it is a mystery, then we, too, had the right to preach mystery and to teach them that it is not the free choice of the heart that matters, and not love, but the mystery, which they must blindly obey, even setting aside their own conscience. And so we did. We corrected your deed and based it on miracle, mystery, and authority. 🔗

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And is it for me to hide our secret from you? Perhaps you precisely want to hear it from my lips. Listen, then: we are not with you, but with him, that is our secret! For a long time now—eight centuries already—we have not been with you, but with him. Exactly eight centuries ago we took from him what you so indignantly rejected,28 that last gift he offered you when he showed you all the kingdoms of the earth: we took Rome and the sword of Caesar from him, and proclaimed ourselves sole rulers of the earth, the only rulers 🔗

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the need for universal union is the third and last torment of men. Mankind in its entirety has always yearned to arrange things so that they must be universal. 🔗

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And so we took Caesar’s sword, and in taking it, of course, we rejected you and followed him. 🔗

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And we shall sit upon the beast and raise the cup, and on it will be written: “mystery!”29 But then, and then only, will the kingdom of peace and happiness come for mankind. 🔗

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With us everyone will be happy, and they will no longer rebel or destroy each other, as in your freedom, everywhere. Oh, we shall convince them that they will only become free when they resign their freedom to us, and submit to us. Will we be right, do you think, or will we be lying? They themselves will be convinced that we are right, for they will remember to what horrors of slavery and confusion your freedom led them. Freedom, free reason, and science will lead them into such a maze, and confront them with such miracles and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, unruly and ferocious, will exterminate themselves; others, unruly but feeble, will exterminate each other; and the remaining third, feeble and wretched, will crawl to our feet and cry out to us: “Yes, you were right, you alone possess his mystery, and we are coming back to you—save us from ourselves.” 🔗

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Oh, we shall finally convince them not to be proud, for you raised them up and thereby taught them pride; we shall prove to them that they are feeble, that they are only pitiful children, but that a child’s happiness is sweeter than any other. They will become timid and look to us and cling to us in fear, like chicks to a hen. They will marvel and stand in awe of us and be proud that we are so powerful and so intelligent as to have been able to subdue such a tempestuous flock of thousands of millions. They will tremble limply before our wrath, their minds will grow timid, their eyes will become as tearful as children’s or women’s, but just as readily at a gesture from us they will pass over to gaiety and laughter, to bright joy and happy children’s song. 🔗

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And everyone will be happy, all the millions of creatures, except for the hundred thousand of those who govern them. For only we, we who keep the mystery, only we shall be unhappy. There will be thousands of millions of happy babes, and a hundred thousand sufferers who have taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil. Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in your name, and beyond the grave they will find only death. But we will keep the secret, and for their own happiness we will entice them with a heavenly and eternal reward. For even if there were anything in the next world, it would not, of course, be for such as they. 🔗

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And we, who took their sins upon ourselves for their happiness, we will stand before you and say: “Judge us if you can and dare.” 🔗

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Look, suppose that one among all those who desire only material and filthy lucre, that one of them, at least, is like my old Inquisitor, who himself ate roots in the desert and raved, overcoming his flesh, in order to make himself free and perfect, but who still loved mankind all his life, and suddenly opened his eyes and saw that there is no great moral blessedness in achieving perfection of the will only to become convinced, at the same time, that millions of the rest of God’s creatures have been set up only for mockery, that they will never be strong enough to manage their freedom, that from such pitiful rebels will never come giants to complete the tower, that it was not for such geese that the great idealist had his dream of harmony. Having understood all that, he returned and joined … the intelligent people. Couldn’t this have happened?” 🔗

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Your Inquisitor doesn’t believe in God, that’s his whole secret!”
“What of it! At last you’ve understood. Yes, indeed, that alone is the whole secret, but is it not suffering, if only for such a man as he, who has wasted his whole life on a great deed in the wilderness and still has not been cured of his love for mankind? 🔗

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I imagine that even the Masons … : Freemasons, a secret society of mutual aid and brotherhood who organized their first “grand lodge” in London in 1717 and from there spread to most parts of the world; considered heretical by the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. 🔗

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one must follow the directives of the intelligent spirit, the dread spirit of death and destruction, and to that end accept lies and deceit, and lead people, consciously now, to death and destruction, deceiving them, moreover, all along the way, so that they somehow do not notice where they are being led, so that at least on the way these pitiful, blind men consider themselves happy. 🔗

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when the Inquisitor fell silent, he waited some time for his prisoner to reply. His silence weighed on him. He had seen how the captive listened to him all the while intently and calmly, looking him straight in the eye, and apparently not wishing to contradict anything. The old man would have liked him to say something, even something bitter, terrible. But suddenly he approaches the old man in silence and gently kisses him on his bloodless, ninety-year-old lips. That is the whole answer. The old man shudders. Something stirs at the corners of his mouth; he walks to the door, opens it, and says to him: ‘Go and do not come again … do not come at all … never, never!’ And he lets him out into the ‘dark squares of the city.’35 The prisoner goes away.” 🔗

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“The kiss burns in his heart, but the old man holds to his former idea.” 🔗

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Alyosha stood up, went over to him in silence, and gently kissed him on the lips.
“Literary theft!” Ivan cried, suddenly going into some kind of rapture. “You stole that from my poem! Thank you, however. Get up, Alyosha, let’s go, it’s time we both did.” 🔗

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“if, indeed, I hold out for the sticky little leaves, I shall love them only remembering you. It’s enough for me that you are here somewhere, and I shall not stop wanting to live. Is that enough for you? If you wish, you can take it as a declaration of love. And now you go right, I’ll go left—and enough, you hear, enough. 🔗

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“Get away, scoundrel! I’m no friend of yours, you fool!” was about to fly out of his mouth, but to his great amazement what did fly out of his mouth was something quite different. 🔗

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It was already very late, but Ivan Fyodorovich was still awake and pondering. That night he went to bed late, at about two. But we will not relate the whole train of his thought, nor is it time yet for us to enter into this soul—this soul will have its turn. And even if we should try to relate something, it would be very hard to do, because there were no thoughts, but something very indefinite, and, above all, too excited. 🔗

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And that morning, as he was falling asleep, the elder Zosima had said positively to him: “I shall not die before I have once more drunk deeply of conversation with you, beloved of my heart, before I have looked upon your dear faces and poured out my soul to you once more.” 🔗

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But everything is from the Lord, and all our fates as well. ‘Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’ Remember that. 🔗

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At this point I want to make clear that I have preferred, rather than recounting all the details of the conversation, to limit myself to the elder’s story according to the manuscript of Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov. It will be shorter and not so tedious, though, of course, I repeat, Alyosha also took much from previous conversations and put it all together. 🔗

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“Ah, my dear, what sort of gladness is there for you, if you burn with fever all night and cough as if your lungs were about to burst?” “Mama,” he answered her, “do not weep, life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we do not want to know it, and if we did want to know it, tomorrow there would be paradise the world over.” And everyone marveled at his words, he spoke so strangely and so decisively; everyone was moved and wept. 🔗

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“Mama, my joy,” he said, “it is not possible for there to be no masters and servants, but let me also be the servant of my servants, the same as they are to me. And I shall also tell you, dear mother, that each of us is guilty in everything before everyone, and I most of all.” 🔗

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“Well, what do you think, doctor, shall I live one more day in the world?” he would joke with him. “Not just one day, you will live many days,” the doctor would answer, “you will live months and years, too.” “But what are years, what are months!” he would exclaim. “Why count the days, when even one day is enough for a man to know all happiness. My dears, why do we quarrel, boast before each other, remember each other’s offenses? Let us go to the garden, let us walk and play and love and praise and kiss each other, and bless our life.” “He’s not long for this world, your son,” the doctor said to mother as she saw him to the porch, “from sickness he is falling into madness.” 🔗

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Let me be sinful before everyone, but so that everyone will forgive me, and that is paradise. Am I not in paradise now?” 🔗

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no memories are more precious to a man than those of his earliest childhood in his parental home, and that is almost always so, as long as there is even a little bit of love and unity in the family. But from a very bad family, too, one can keep precious memories, if only one’s soul knows how to seek out what is precious. 🔗

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But I remember how, even before I learned to read, a certain spiritual perception visited me for the first time, when I was just eight years old. 🔗

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“Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return into the earth: the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord henceforth and forevermore!” 🔗

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In the face of earthly truth, the enacting of eternal truth is accomplished. Here the Creator, as in the first days of creation, crowning each day with praise: “That which I have created is good,” looks at Job and again praises his creation. And Job, praising God, does not only serve him, but will also serve his whole creation, from generation to generation and unto ages of ages,8 for to this he was destined. 🔗

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Only a little, a tiny seed is needed: let him cast it into the soul of a simple man, and it will not die, it will live in his soul all his life, hiding there amidst the darkness, amidst the stench of his sins, as a bright point, as a great reminder. And there is no need, no need of much explaining and teaching, he will understand everything simply. 🔗

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Only the people and their future spiritual power will convert our atheists, who have severed themselves from their own land. 🔗

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for everything is perfect, everything except man is sinless, and Christ is with them even before ups.” 🔗

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Gentlemen,” I cried suddenly from the bottom of my heart, “look at the divine gifts around us: the clear sky, the fresh air, the tender grass, the birds, nature is beautiful and sinless, and we, we alone, are godless and foolish, and do not understand that life is paradise, for we need only wish to understand, and it will come at once in all its beauty, and we shall embrace each other and weep …” wanted to go on but I could not, so much sweetness, so much youngness even took my breath away, and in my heart there was such happiness as I had never felt before in all my life. 🔗

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For everyone now strives most of all to separate his person, wishing to experience the fullness of life within himself, and yet what comes of all his efforts is not the fullness of life but full suicide, for instead of the fullness of self-definition, they fall into complete isolation. For all men in our age are separated into units, each seeks seclusion in his own hole, each withdraws from the others, hides himself, and hides what he has, and ends by pushing himself away from people and pushing people away from himself. He accumulates wealth in solitude, thinking: how strong, how secure I am now; and does not see, madman as he is, that the more he accumulates, the more he sinks into suicidal impotence. For he is accustomed to relying only on himself, he has separated his unit from the whole, he has accustomed his soul to not believing in people’s help, in people or in mankind, and now only trembles lest his money and his acquired privileges perish. Everywhere now the human mind has begun laughably not to understand that a man’s true security lies not in his own solitary effort, but in the general wholeness of humanity. But there must needs come a term to this horrible isolation, and everyone will all at once realize how unnaturally they have separated themselves one from another. Such will be the spirit of the time, and they will be astonished that they sat in darkness for so long, and did not see the light. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the heavens19 🔗

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Already in the first month of marriage, a ceaseless thought began troubling him: “So my wife loves me, but what if she found out?” When she became pregnant with their first child and told him of it, he suddenly became troubled: “I am giving life, but I have taken a life.” They had children: “How dare I love, teach, and raise them, how shall I speak to them of virtue: I have shed blood.” They were wonderful children, one longed to caress them: “And I cannot look at their innocent, bright faces; I am unworthy.” Finally the blood of the murdered victim began to appear to him, menacingly and bitterly, her destroyed young life, her blood crying out for revenge. 🔗

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I simply hated you and wished with all my might to revenge myself on you for everything. But my Lord defeated the devil in my heart. Know, however, that you have never been closer to death.” 🔗

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men love the fall of the righteous man and his disgrace. 🔗

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The world has proclaimed freedom, especially of late, but what do we see in this freedom of theirs: only slavery and suicide! For the world says: “You have needs, therefore satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the noblest and richest men. Do not be afraid to satisfy them, but even increase them”—this is the current teaching of the world. And in this they see freedom. But what comes of this right to increase one’s needs? For the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; for the poor, envy and murder, for they have been given rights, but have not yet been shown any way of satisfying their needs. 🔗

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And therefore the idea of serving mankind, of the brotherhood and oneness of people, is fading more and more in the world, and indeed the idea now even meets with mockery, for how can one drop one’s habits, where will this slave go now that he is so accustomed to satisfying the innumerable needs he himself has invented? He is isolated, and what does he care about the whole? They have succeeded in amassing more and more things, but have less and less joy. 🔗

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Which of the two is more capable of upholding and serving a great idea—the isolated rich man or one who is liberated from the tyranny of things and habits? 🔗

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I was his master, and he was my servant, and now, as we kissed each other lovingly and in spiritual tenderness, a great human communion took place between us. I have given it much thought, and now I reason thus: Is it so far beyond reach of the mind that this great and openhearted communion might in due time take place everywhere among our Russian people? I believe that it will take place, and that the time is near. 🔗

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Verily, there is more dreamy fantasy in them than in us. They hope to make a just order for themselves, but, having rejected Christ, they will end by drenching the earth with blood, for blood calls to blood, and he who draws the sword will perish by the sword.7 And were it not for Christ’s covenant, they would annihilate one another down to the last two men on earth. And these last two, in their pride, would not be able to restrain each other either, so that the last would annihilate the next to last, and then himself as well. And so it would come to pass, were it not for Christ’s covenant, that for the sake of the meek and the humble this thing will be shortened.8 🔗

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Brothers, do not be afraid of men’s sin, love man also in his sin, for this likeness of God’s love is the height of love on earth. Love all of God’s creation, both the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love animals, love plants, love each thing. If you love each thing, you will perceive the mystery of God in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin tirelessly to perceive more and more of it every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an entire, universal love. 🔗

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A loving humility is a terrible power, the most powerful of all, nothing compares with it. Keep company with yourself and look to yourself every day and hour, every minute, that your image be ever gracious. 🔗

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My young brother asked forgiveness of the birds: it seems senseless, yet it is right, for all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world. 🔗

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Much on earth is concealed from US,10 but in place of it we have been granted a secret, mysterious sense of our living bond with the other world, with the higher heavenly world, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds. That is why philosophers say it is impossible on earth to conceive the essence of things. God took seeds from other worlds and sowed them on this earth, and raised up his garden; and everything that could sprout sprouted, but it lives and grows only through its sense of being in touch with other mysterious worlds; if this sense is weakened or destroyed in you, that which has grown up in you dies. Then you become indifferent to life, and even come to hate it. So I think. 🔗

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Remember especially that you cannot be the judge of anyone.11 For there can be no judge of a criminal on earth until the judge knows that he, too, is a criminal, exactly the same as the one who stands before him, and that he is perhaps most guilty of all for the crime of the one standing before him. When he understands this, then he will be able to be a judge. 🔗

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And if everyone abandons you and drives you out by force, then, when you are left alone, fall down on the earth and kiss it and water it with your tears, and the earth will bring forth fruit from your tears, even though no one has seen or heard you in your solitude. 🔗

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The righteous man departs, but his light remains. People are always saved after the death of him who saved them. 🔗

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Kiss the earth and love it, tirelessly, insatiably, love all men, love all things, seek this rapture and ecstasy. Water the earth with the tears of your joy, and love those tears. 🔗

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“What is hell?” And I answer thus: “The suffering of being no longer able to love.”13 🔗

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People speak of the material flames of hell. I do not explore this mystery, and I fear it, but I think that if there were material flames, truly people would be glad to have them, for, as I fancy, in material torment they might forget, at least for a moment, their far more terrible spiritual torment. And yet it is impossible to take this spiritual torment from them, for this torment is not external but is within them. And were it possible to take it from them, then, I think, their unhappiness would be even greater because of it. For though the righteous would forgive them from paradise, seeing their torments, and call them to themselves, loving them boundlessly, they would thereby only increase their torments, for they would arouse in them an even stronger flame of thirst for reciprocal, active, and grateful love, which is no longer possible. 🔗

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For them hell is voluntary and insatiable; they are sufferers by their own will. For they have cursed themselves by cursing God and life. They feed on their wicked pride, as if a hungry man in the desert were to start sucking his own blood from his body.17 🔗

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Here again I will add, speaking for myself personally, that I find it almost loathsome to recall this frivolous and tempting occurrence, essentially quite insignificant and natural, and I would, of course, omit all mention of it from my story, if it had not influenced in the strongest and most definite way the soul and heart of the main, though future, hero of my story, Alyosha, causing, as it were, a crisis and upheaval in his soul, which shook his mind but also ultimately strengthened it for the whole of his life, and towards a definite purpose. 🔗

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And it somehow happened that everyone who loved the deceased elder and accepted the institution of elders with loving obedience suddenly became terribly frightened of something, and when they met they only glanced timidly into each other’s faces. 🔗

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in certain cases, really, it is more honorable to yield to some passion, however unwise, if it springs from great love, than not to yield to it at all. 🔗

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Again, it was not miracles he needed, but only a “higher justice,” which, as he believed, had been violated—it was this that wounded his heart so cruelly and suddenly. 🔗

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I am glad that at such a moment my young man turned out to be not so reasonable; the time will come for an intelligent man to be reasonable, but if at such an exceptional moment there is no love to be found in a young man’s heart, then when will it come? 🔗

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He loved his God and believed in him steadfastly, though he suddenly murmured against him. 🔗

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His aim this time was twofold: first, a revengeful one—that is, to see “the disgrace of the righteous man,” the probable “fall” of Alyosha “from the saints to the sinners,” which he was already savoring in anticipation—and second, he had in mind a material aim as well, one rather profitable for himself, of which more shall be said below. 🔗

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now aroused in him suddenly quite a different, unexpected, and special feeling, the feeling of some remarkable, great, and most pure-hearted curiosity, and without any fear now, without a trace of his former terror—that was the main thing, and it could not but surprise him. 🔗

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It’s true I had sly thoughts about you, Alyosha. I’m a low woman, I’m a violent woman, yet there are moments, Alyosha, when I look upon you as my conscience. I keep thinking: ‘How a man like him must despise a bad woman like me.’ I thought the same thing two days ago, as I was running home from the young lady’s. I noticed you long ago, Alyosha, and Mitya knows, I told him. And Mitya understands. Will you believe, Alyosha, really I look at you sometimes and feel ashamed, ashamed of myself … 🔗

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I’ve lost such a treasure as you never had, and you cannot judge me now. You’d do better to look here, at her: did you see how she spared me? I came here looking for a wicked soul—I was drawn to that, because I was low and wicked myself, but I found a true sister, I found a treasure—a loving soul … She spared me just now … I’m speaking of you, Agrafena Alexandrovna. You restored my soul just now.” 🔗

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he should have realized that everything had just come together for them both in such a way that their souls were shaken, which does not happen very often in life. 🔗

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But the woman was wicked as wicked could be, and she began to kick them with her feet: ‘It’s me who’s getting pulled out, not you; it’s my onion, not yours.’ No sooner did she say it than the onion broke. And the woman fell back into the lake and is burning there to this day. And the angel wept and went away. 🔗

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“Why refuse?” Rakitin said in a deep voice, visibly ashamed, but disguising his embarrassment with swagger. “It will truly come in handy; fools exist for the intelligent man’s profit.” 🔗

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One cannot ask so much of a human soul, one should be more merciful 🔗

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Who am I compared with her? I came here seeking my own ruin, saying: ‘Who cares, who cares?’ because of my faintheartedness; but she, after five years of torment, as soon as someone comes and speaks a sincere word to her, forgives everything, forgets everything, and weeps! The man who wronged her has come back, he is calling her, and she forgives him everything, and hastens to him with joy, and she won’t take a knife, she won’t! No, I am not like that. I don’t know whether you are like that, Misha, but I am not like that! I learned this lesson today, just now … She is higher in love than we are … 🔗

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“Yes, I’ve forgiven him,” Grushenka said meaningly. “What a base heart! To my base heart!” She suddenly snatched a glass from the table, drank it in one gulp, held it up, and smashed it as hard as she could on the floor. The glass shattered and tinkled. A certain cruel line flashed in her smile. 🔗

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I’ll sit down beside him, I’ll seduce him, I’ll set him on fire: ‘Take a good look at me now, my dear sir, because that’s all you’ll get—for there’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip!’ Maybe that’s why I need this finery, Rakitka,” Grushenka finished with a malicious little laugh. “I’m violent, Alyosha, I’m wild. I’ll tear off my finery, I’ll maim myself, my beauty, I’ll burn my face, and slash it with a knife, and go begging. If I choose, I won’t go anywhere or to anyone; if I choose, I’ll send everything back to Kuzma tomorrow, all his presents, and all his money, and go and work all my life as a charwoman 🔗

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“What did I do for you?” Alyosha answered with a tender smile, and he bent down to her and gently took her hands. “I just gave you an onion, one little onion, that’s all, that’s all … !” 🔗

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Alyosha walked out of town, and went across the fields to the monastery. 🔗

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His soul was overflowing, but somehow vaguely, and no single sensation stood out, making itself felt too much; on the contrary, one followed another in a sort of slow and calm rotation. But there was sweetness in his heart, and, strangely, Alyosha was not surprised at that. 🔗

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He quietly began praying, but soon felt that he was praying almost mechanically. Fragments of thoughts flashed in his soul, catching fire like little stars and dying out at once to give way to others, yet there reigned in his soul something whole, firm, assuaging, and he was conscious of it himself. 🔗

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Well, one should forgive pathetic phrases, one must. Pathetic phrases ease the soul, without them men’s grief would be too heavy. 🔗

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the road is wide, straight, bright, crystal, and the sun is at the end of it 🔗

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Not grief, but men’s joy Christ visited when he worked his first miracle, he helped men’s joy … ‘He who loves men, loves their joy …’ 🔗

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All that is true and beautiful is always full of all-forgiveness 🔗

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I gave a little onion, and so I am here. And there are many here who only gave an onion, only one little onion 🔗

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him?”
“I’m afraid … I don’t dare to look,” whispered Alyosha.
“Do not be afraid of him. Awful is his greatness before us, terrible is his loftiness, yet he is boundlessly merciful, he became like us out of love, and he is rejoicing with us, transforming water into wine, that the joy of the guests may not end. He is waiting for new guests, he is ceaselessly calling new guests, now and unto ages of ages. See, they are bringing the new wine, the vessels are being brought in …”
Something burned in Alyosha’s heart, something suddenly filled him almost painfully, tears of rapture nearly burst from his soul … He stretched out his hands, gave a short cry, and woke up 🔗

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He did not stop on the porch, either, but went quickly down the steps. Filled with rapture, his soul yearned for freedom, space, vastness. Over him the heavenly dome, full of quiet, shining stars, hung boundlessly. From the zenith to the horizon the still-dim Milky Way stretched its double strand. Night, fresh and quiet, almost unstirring, enveloped the earth. The white towers and golden domes of the church gleamed in the sapphire sky. The luxuriant autumn flowers in the flowerbeds near the house had fallen asleep until morning. The silence of the earth seemed to merge with the silence of the heavens, the mystery of the earth touched the mystery of the stars … Alyosha stood gazing and suddenly, as if he had been cut down, threw himself to the earth.
He did not know why he was embracing it, he did not try to understand why he longed so irresistibly to kiss it, to kiss all of it, but he was kissing it, weeping, sobbing, and watering it with his tears, and he vowed ecstatically to love it, to love it unto ages of ages. “Water the earth with the tears of your joy, and love those tears … ,” rang in his soul. What was he weeping for? Oh, in his rapture he wept even for the stars that shone on him from the abyss, and “he was not ashamed of this ecstasy.” It was as if threads from all those innumerable worlds of God all came together in his soul, and it was trembling all over, “touching other worlds.” He wanted to forgive everyone and for everything, and to ask forgiveness, oh, not for himself! but for all and for everything, “as others are asking for me,” rang again in his soul. But with each moment he felt clearly and almost tangibly something as firm and immovable as this heavenly vault descend into his soul. Some sort of idea, as it were, was coming to reign in his mind—now for the whole of his life and unto ages of ages. He fell to the earth a weak youth and rose up a fighter, steadfast for the rest of his life, and he knew it and felt it suddenly, in that very moment of his ecstasy. Never, never in all his life would Alyosha forget that moment. “Someone visited my soul in that hour,” he would say afterwards, with firm belief in his words …
Three days later he left the monastery, which was also in accordance with the words of his late elder, who had bidden him to “sojourn in the world.” 🔗

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The vile bog he had gotten stuck in of his own will burdened him too much, and, like a great many men in such cases, he believed most of all in a change of place: if only it weren’t for these people, if only it weren’t for these circumstances, if only one could fly away from this cursed place—then everything would be reborn! That was what he believed in and what he longed for. 🔗

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Mitya decided, and therefore he decided to turn the whole world upside down, if need be, but to be sure to return the three thousand to Katerina Ivanovna at all costs and before all else. 🔗

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“What terrible tragedies realism inflicts on people,” Mitya uttered in complete despair. 🔗

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There was no vengeance in his soul for anyone, not even Samsonov. He strode along a narrow forest path, senselessly, lost, with his “lost idea,” not caring where he was going. 🔗

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Jealousy! “Othello is not jealous, he is trustful,” Pushkin observed,1 and this one observation already testifies to the remarkable depth of our great poet’s mind. Othello’s soul is simply shattered and his whole world view clouded because his ideal is destroyed. Othello will not hide, spy, peep: he is trustful. On the contrary, he had to be led, prompted, roused with great effort to make him even think of betrayal. A truly jealous man is not like that. It is impossible to imagine all the shame and moral degradation a jealous man can tolerate without the least remorse. And it is not that they are all trite and dirty souls. On the contrary, it is possible to have a lofty heart, to love purely, to be full of self-sacrifice, and at the same time to hide under tables, to bribe the meanest people, and live with the nastiest filth of spying and eavesdropping. Othello could in no way be reconciled with betrayal—not that he could not forgive, but he could not be reconciled—though his soul was gentle and innocent as a babe’s. Not so the truly jealous man: it is hard to imagine what some jealous men can tolerate and be reconciled to, and what they can forgive! Jealous men forgive sooner than anyone else, and all women know it. The jealous man (having first made a terrible scene, of course) can and will very promptly forgive, for example, a nearly proven betrayal, the embraces and kisses he has seen himself, if, for example, at the same time he can somehow be convinced that this was “the last time” and that his rival will disappear from that moment on, that he will go to the end of the earth, or that he himself will take her away somewhere, to some place where this terrible rival will never come. Of course, the reconciliation will only last an hour, because even if the rival has indeed disappeared, tomorrow he will invent another, a new one, and become jealous of this new one. And one may ask what is the good of a love that must constantly be spied on, and what is the worth of a love that needs to be guarded so intensely? But that is something the truly jealous will never understand, though at the same time there happen, indeed, to be lofty hearts among them. It is also remarkable that these same lofty-hearted men, while standing in some sort of closet, eavesdropping and spying, though they understand clearly “in their lofty hearts” all the shame they have gotten into of their own will, nevertheless, at least for that moment, while standing in that closet, will not feel any pangs of remorse. 🔗

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But when Grushenka disappeared, Mitya at once began again to suspect in her all the baseness and perfidy of betrayal. And for that he felt no pangs of remorse. 🔗

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“Part with everything, Dmitri Fyodorovich!” Madame Khokhlakov interrupted him in the most determined tone. “Everything, women especially. Your goal is the mines, and there’s no need to take women there. Later, when you return in wealth and glory, you will find a companion for your heart in the highest society. She will be a modern girl, educated and without prejudices. By then the women’s question, which is just beginning now, will have ripened, and a new woman will appear 🔗

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But anguish, the anguish of ignorance and indecision, was growing in his heart with exceeding rapidity. “Is she here, finally, or is she not?” boiled angrily in his heart. And he suddenly made up his mind, reached out his hand, and tapped softly on the windowpane. 🔗

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Live, my joy … you loved me for one little hour, so remember Mitenka Karamazov forever … She always called me Mitenka, remember?” 🔗

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“What are you looking at the bullet for?” Pyotr Ilyich watched him with uneasy curiosity.
“Just a whim. Now, if you had decided to blow your brains out, would you look at the bullet before you loaded the pistol, or not?”
“Why look at it?”
“It will go into my brain, so it’s interesting to see what it’s like … 🔗

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“The pistols are nonsense, too! Drink and stop imagining things. I love life, I’ve grown to love life too much, so much it’s disgusting. Enough! To life, my dear, let us drink to life, I offer a toast to life! Why am I so pleased with myself? I’m base, but I’m pleased with myself, and yet it pains me to be base and still pleased with myself. I bless creation, I’m ready right now to bless God and his creation, but … I must exterminate one foul insect, so that it will not crawl around spoiling life for others … Let us drink to life, dear brother! What can be more precious than life! Nothing, nothing! To life, and to one queen of queens.” 🔗

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“A nice fellow, but a fool … ,” he muttered to himself as he went. “I’ve heard about some officer, Grushenka’s ‘former’ one. Well, if he’s come now … Ah, those pistols! Eh, the devil, I’m not his nursemaid, am I? Go ahead! Anyway, nothing will happen. Loudmouths, that’s all they are. They get drunk and fight, fight and make peace. They don’t mean business. ‘Remove myself,’‘punish myself’—what is all that? Nothing will happen! He’s shouted in the same style a thousand times, drunk, in the tavern. Now he’s not drunk. ‘Drunk in spirit’—these scoundrels love style. I’m not his nursemaid, am I? He must have had a fight, his whole mug was covered with blood. But who with? I’ll find out in the tavern. And that bloodstained handkerchief … Pah, the devil, he left it on my floor … But who cares?” 🔗

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He was almost breathless; there was much, much that he wanted to say, but only odd exclamations flew out. The pan gazed motionlessly at him, at his wad of money, gazed at Grushenka, and was clearly bewildered. 🔗

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In a word, something disorderly and absurd began, but Mitya was in his natural element, as it were, and the more absurd it all became, the more his spirits rose. If some peasant had asked him for money at that moment, he would at once have pulled out his whole wad and started giving it away right and left without counting. 🔗

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he could now see clearly whom she loved. So now all he had to do was live, but … but he could not live, he could not, oh, damnation! “God, restore him who was struck down at the fence! Let this terrible cup pass from me4 You worked miracles, O Lord, for sinners just like me! And what, what if the old man is alive? Oh, then I will remove the shame of the remaining disgrace, I will return the stolen money, I’ll give it back, I’ll dig it up somewhere … There will be no trace of shame left, except forever in my heart! But no, no, oh, fainthearted, impossible dreams! Oh, damnation!” 🔗

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“Isn’t one hour, one minute of her love worth the rest of my life, even in the torments of disgrace?” This wild question seized his heart. “To her, to her alone, to see her, to hear her, and not to think of anything, to forget everything, if only for this one night, for one hour, for one moment!” 🔗

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Mitya, my falcon, why aren’t you kissing me? You kissed me once and tore yourself away, to look, to listen … Why listen to me! Kiss me, kiss me harder, like this! Let’s love, if we’re going to love! I’ll be your slave now, your lifelong slave! It’s sweet to be a slave … ! Kiss me! Beat me, torment me, do something to me … Oh, how I deserve to be tormented … Stop! Wait, not now, I don’t want it to be like that … ,” she suddenly pushed him away. “Go, Mitka, I’ll drink wine now, I want to get drunk, I’m going to get drunk and dance, I want to, I want to!” 🔗

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But today let’s dance. Tomorrow the convent, but today we’ll dance. I want to be naughty, good people, what of it, God will forgive. If I were God I’d forgive all people: ‘My dear sinners, from now on I forgive you all.’ And I’ll go and ask forgiveness: ‘Forgive me, good people, I’m a foolish woman, that’s what.’ I’m a beast, that’s what. But I want to pray. I gave an onion. Wicked as I am, I want to pray! Mitya, let them dance, don’t interfere. Everyone in the world is good, every one of them. The world is a good place. We may be bad, but the world is a good place. We’re bad and good, both bad and good … No, tell me, let me ask you, all of you come here and I’ll ask you; tell me this, all of you: why am I so good? I am good, I’m very good … Tell me, then: why am I so good?” 🔗

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“What, was I asleep? Yes … the bell … I fell asleep and had a dream that I was driving over the snow … a bell was ringing, and I was dozing. It seemed I was driving with someone very dear to me—with you. Far, far away … I was embracing you and kissing you, pressing close to you, as if I were cold, and the snow was glistening … You know how snow glistens at night, and there’s a new moon, and you feel as if you’re not on earth … I woke up, and my dear was beside me—how good …” 🔗

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phlegmatic 🔗

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there were even paintings of English racehorses in black frames on the walls, which, as everyone knows, constitute a necessary adornment of any billiard room in a bachelor’s house. 🔗

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“I have the soul of a military man, not a civilian,” 🔗

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Later it turned out that, having come to his senses, he had begun crawling, and probably crawled for a long while, losing consciousness and passing out several times more. She noticed at once that he was all covered with blood, and at that began screaming to high heaven. Grigory kept muttering softly and incoherently: “He killed … father … killed … stop shouting, fool … run, tell …” But Marfa Ignatievna would not quiet down and went on screaming, and suddenly, seeing that the master’s window was open and there was light inside, she ran to it and began calling Fyodor Pavlovich. But, looking through the window, she saw a terrible sight: the master was lying on his back on the floor, not moving. The front of his light-colored dressing gown and his white shirt were soaked with blood. A candle on the table shed a bright light on the blood and on the motionless, dead face of Fyodor Pavlovich. 🔗

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They lighted a candle and saw that Smerdyakov had still not calmed down but was struggling in his little room, his eyes crossed and foam running from his lips. 🔗

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The Soul’s Journey through Torments: according to a purely popular Christian notion, as a person’s soul ascends towards heaven after death, it meets evil spirits that try to force it down to hell. Only the souls of the righteous avoid these “torments” (there are said to be twenty of them). The point here is that Mitya’s soul, figuratively, is not merely suffering but rising; the “journey” is one of purification. 🔗

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On the left, at Mitya’s side, where Maximov had been sitting at the start of the evening, the prosecutor now sat down, and to Mitya’s right, where Grushenka had been, a pink-cheeked young man settled himself, dressed in a rather threadbare sort of hunting jacket, and in front of him appeared an inkstand and some paper. He turned out to be the district attorney’s clerk, who had come with him. The police commissioner now stood near the window, at the other end of the room, next to Kalganov, who was sitting in a chair by the same window. 🔗

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I wanted to announce to her that this blood that was gnawing at my heart all night has been washed away, has disappeared, and I am no longer a murderer! 🔗

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Recently, in the monastery, I announced it in the elder Zosima’s cell … That same day, in the evening, I beat my father and nearly killed him, and swore in front of witnesses that I would come back and kill him … Oh, there’s a thousand witnesses! I’ve been shouting for the whole month, everyone is a witness … ! The fact is right there, the fact speaks, it cries out, but—feelings, gentlemen, feelings are something else. 🔗

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“You feel repentant?”
“No, not really repentant, don’t write that down. I’m not good myself, gentlemen, that’s the thing, I’m not so beautiful myself, and therefore I had no right to consider him repulsive, that’s the thing. Perhaps you can write that down.” 🔗

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Grushenka was weeping, and then suddenly, when the grief came too near her soul, she jumped up, clasped her hands, and, crying “Woe, woe is me!” in a loud wail, rushed out of the room to him, to her Mitya, so unexpectedly that no one had time to stop her. Mitya, hearing her wail, shuddered all over, jumped up, gave a shout, and, as if forgetting himself, rushed headlong to meet her. But again they were not allowed to come together, though they had already caught sight of each other. He was seized firmly by the arms: he struggled, tried to break loose, it took three or four men to hold him. She, too, was seized, and he saw her shouting and stretching out her arms to him as they drew her away. 🔗

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“Eh, gentlemen, why pick on such little things: how, when, and why, and precisely this much money and not that much, and all that claptrap … if you keep on, it’ll take you three volumes and an epilogue to cram it all in.” 🔗

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Sober and wise, he’s stupid,
Drunk and stupid, he’s wise. 🔗

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“And away with little details, gentlemen, with all these pettifogging details,” Mitya delightedly exclaimed, “otherwise the devil knows what will come of it, isn’t that so?” 🔗

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At this point he finally raised his eyes to his listeners. They seemed to be looking at him with completely untroubled attention. A sort of twinge of indignation went through Mitya’s soul. 🔗

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Take comfort, gentlemen, I’ll reveal it to you. You’ve got foolishness in your minds. You don’t know with whom you’re dealing! You’re dealing with a suspect who gives evidence against himself, who gives evidence that does him harm! Yes, sirs, for I am a knight of honor and you are not!” 🔗

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“I am much kinder than you think, gentlemen, and I will tell you my reasons, and give you that hint, though you’re not worthy of it. I keep silent, gentlemen, because it involves a disgrace for me. The answer to the question of where I got this money contains such a disgrace for me as could not be compared even with killing and robbing my father, if I had killed and robbed him. That is why I cannot speak. Because of the disgrace. 🔗

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“It’s like a dream, I’ve dreamed of being disgraced like this.” But to take his socks off was even painful for him: they were not very clean, nor were his underclothes, and now everyone could see it. And above all he did not like his own feet; all his life for some reason he had found both his big toes ugly, especially the right one with its crude, flat toenail, somehow curved under, and now they would all see it. This unbearable shame suddenly made him, deliberately now, even more rude. He tore his shirt off. 🔗

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The one who opened the door to my father’s room and went in through that door is the one who killed him, he is the one who robbed him. Who he is, I am at a loss and at pains to say, but he is not Dmitri Karamazov, know that—and that is all I can tell you, and enough, stop badgering me … Exile me, hang me, but don’t irritate me any more. I am silent. Call your witnesses!” 🔗

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“The disgrace lay not in the fifteen hundred, but in my separating that fifteen hundred from the three thousand,” Mitya spoke firmly. 🔗

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Any man can be, and perhaps is, a scoundrel, but not any man can be a thief 🔗

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I slyly counted out half of the three thousand and sewed it up with needle and thread, in cold blood, I sewed it up calculatingly, I sewed it up even before I went drinking, and then, when I had sewn it up, I went and got drunk on the other half! It took a scoundrel to do that, sir! Do you understand now?” 🔗

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I kept saying to myself at the same time: ‘No, Dmitri Fyodorovich, perhaps you’re not yet a thief.’ Why? Precisely because you can go tomorrow and give the fifteen hundred back to Katya. And only yesterday did I decide to tear the amulet off my neck, on my way from Fenya to Perkhotin, for until that moment I couldn’t decide, and as soon as I tore it off, at that moment I became a final and indisputable thief, a thief and a dishonest man for the rest of my life. Why? Because along with the amulet, my dream of going to Katya and saying: ‘I am a scoundrel, but not a thief,’ was also torn up! Do you understand now, do you understand!” 🔗

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I learned a lot this night! I learned that it is impossible not only to live a scoundrel, but also to die a scoundrel … No, gentlemen, one must die honestly … 🔗

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So I lied, and that’s it, I lied once and then I didn’t want to correct it. Why does a man lie sometimes?”
“That is very difficult to say, Dmitri Fyodorovich, why a man lies,” 🔗

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He had a strange sort of dream, somehow entirely out of place and out of time. It seemed he was driving somewhere in the steppe, in a place where he had served once long ago; he is being driven through the slush by a peasant, in a cart with a pair of horses. And it seems to Mitya that he is cold, it is the beginning of November, and snow is pouring down in big, wet flakes that melt as soon as they touch the ground. And the peasant is driving briskly, waving his whip nicely, he has a long, fair beard, and he is not an old man, maybe around fifty, dressed in a gray peasant coat. And there is a village nearby—black, black huts, and half of the huts are burnt, just charred beams sticking up. And at the edge of the village there are peasant women standing along the road, many women, a long line of them, all of them thin, wasted, their faces a sort of brown color. Especially that one at the end—such a bony one, tall, looking as if she were forty, but she may be only twenty, with a long, thin face, and in her arms a baby is crying, and her breasts must be all dried up, not a drop of milk in them. And the baby is crying, crying, reaching out its bare little arms, its little fists somehow all blue from the cold.
“Why are they crying? Why are they crying?” Mitya asks, flying past them at a great clip.
“The wee one,” the driver answers, “it’s the wee one crying.” And Mitya is struck that he has said it in his own peasant way: “the wee one,” and not “the baby.” And he likes it that the peasant has said “wee one”: there seems to be more pity in it.
“But why is it crying?” Mitya insists, as if he were foolish, “why are its little arms bare, why don’t they wrap it up?”
“The wee one’s cold, its clothes are frozen, they don’t keep it warm.”
“But why is it so? Why?” foolish Mitya will not leave off.
“They’re poor, burnt out, they’ve got no bread, they’re begging for their burnt-down place.”
“No, no,” Mitya still seems not to understand, “tell me: why are these burnt-out mothers standing here, why are the people poor, why is the wee one poor, why is the steppe bare, why don’t they embrace and kiss, why don’t they sing joyful songs, why are they blackened with such black misery, why don’t they feed the wee one?”
And he feels within himself that, though his questions have no reason or sense, he still certainly wants to ask in just that way, and he should ask in just that way. And he also feels a tenderness such as he has never known before surging up in his heart, he wants to weep, he wants to do something for them all, so that the wee one will no longer cry, so that the blackened, dried-up mother of the wee one will not cry either, so that there will be no more tears in anyone from that moment on, and it must be done at once, at once, without delay and despite everything, with all his Karamazov unrestraint.
“And I am with you, too, I won’t leave you now, I will go with you for the rest of my life,” the dear, deeply felt words of Grushenka came from somewhere near him. And his whole heart blazed up and turned towards some sort of light, and he wanted to live and live, to go on and on along some path, towards the new, beckoning light, and to hurry, hurry, right now, at once!
“What? Where?” he exclaims, opening his eyes and sitting up on the chest, as if he were just coming out of a faint, and smiling brightly. 🔗

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But all sorts of extraneous and unrelated thoughts sometimes flash even through the mind of a criminal who is being led out to execution. 🔗

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“I like observing realism, Smurov,” Kolya suddenly spoke. “Have you noticed how dogs sniff each other when they meet? It must be some general law of their nature.”
“Yes, and a funny one, too.”
“In fact, it is not a funny one, you’re wrong there. Nothing is funny in nature, however it may seem to man with his prejudices. If dogs could reason and criticize, they would undoubtedly find as much that is funny to them in the social relations of humans, their masters—if not far more; I repeat, because I am convinced of it, that there is far more foolishness in us. That is Rakitin’s thought, a remarkable thought. I am a socialist, Smurov.”
“And what is a socialist?” asked Smurov.
“It’s when everyone is equal, everyone has property in common, there are no marriages, and each one has whatever religion and laws he likes, and all the rest. You’re not grown up enough for that yet, you’re too young. It is cold, by the way.” 🔗

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Everything is habit with people, everything, even state and political relations. Habit is the chief motive force. What a funny peasant, by the way.” 🔗

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Still, it must not be thought that worrying about his face and height absorbed his whole soul. On the contrary, however painful those moments before the mirror were, he would quickly forget them, and for a long time, “giving himself wholly to ideas and to real life,” as he himself defined his activity. 🔗

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there are people who feel deeply but are somehow beaten down. Their buffoonery is something like a spiteful irony against those to whom they dare not speak the truth directly because of a long-standing, humiliating timidity before them. 🔗

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“Adults, for instance, go to the theater, and in the theater, too, all sorts of heroic adventures are acted out, sometimes also with robbers and battles—and isn’t that the same thing, in its own way, of course? And a game of war among youngsters during a period of recreation, or a game of robbers—that, too, is a sort of nascent art, an emerging need for art in a young soul, and these games are sometimes even better conceived than theater performances, with the only difference that people go to the theater to look at the actors, and here young people are themselves the actors. But it’s only natural.” 🔗

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“Well, it’s all nonsense about Troy, trifles. I myself consider it an idle question,” Kolya responded with prideful modesty. He was now perfectly on pitch, though he was still somewhat worried: he felt that he was overly excited, and that he had told about the goose, for example, too openheartedly, while Alyosha had kept silent all through the story and looked serious, so that it gradually began to rankle the vain boy: “Is he silent because he despises me, thinking that I’m seeking his praise? If so, if he dares to think so, then I …” 🔗

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“Yes, world history. It is the study of the succession of human follies, and nothing more. I only respect mathematics and natural science,” Kolya swaggered, and glanced at Alyosha: his was the only opinion in the room that he feared. But Alyosha was still as silent and serious as before. If Alyosha had said anything now, the matter would have ended there, but Alyosha did not respond, and “his silence could well be contemptuous,” and at that Kolya became quite vexed.
“And also these classical languages we have now: simply madness, nothing more … Again you seem to disagree with me, Karamazov?” 🔗

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who taught you all that: Kolya’s ideas throughout his harangue are drawn from the liberal press of the time. Again, as with Madame Khokhlakov, Dostoevsky is teasing his opponents, here by reflecting their ideas through a schoolboy’s mind. There is, of course, a serious point to it, connected with one of the major themes of B.K. , the influence of the word. 🔗

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The doctor once again looked squeamishly around the room and threw off his fur coat. An important decoration hanging on his neck flashed in everyone’s eyes. The captain caught the coat in midair, and the doctor took off his hat.
“Where is the patient?” he asked loudly and emphatically. 🔗

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“I’ve long learned to respect the rare person in you,” Kolya muttered again, faltering and becoming confused. “I’ve heard you are a mystic and were in the monastery. I know you are a mystic, but … that didn’t stop me. The touch of reality will cure you … With natures like yours, it can’t be otherwise.”
“What do you mean by ‘a mystic’? Cure me of what?” Alyosha was a little surprised.
“Well, God and all that.”
“What, don’t you believe in God?”
“On the contrary, I have nothing against God. Of course God is only a hypothesis … but … I admit, he is necessary, for the sake of order … for the order of the world and so on … and if there were no God, he would have to be invented,”1 🔗

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“Voltaire believed in God, but very little, it seems, and it seems he also loved mankind very little,” 🔗

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“For God’s sake, you want obedience and mysticism. You must agree, for instance, that the Christian faith has only served the rich and noble, so as to keep the lower classes in slavery, isn’t that so?” 🔗

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I also think, for example, that to flee the fatherland for America is a base thing, worse than base—it’s foolish. Why go to America, if one can also be of much use to mankind here? Precisely now. 🔗

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If I speak about Tatiana, it’s not at all to say that I’m for women’s emancipation. I acknowledge that woman is a subordinate creature and must obey. Les femmes tricottent,4 as Napoleon said,” Kolya smirked for some reason 🔗

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I recently read a comment by a foreigner, a German, who used to live in Russia, about our young students these days. ‘Show a Russian schoolboy a chart of the heavens,’ he writes, ‘of which hitherto he had no idea at all, and the next day he will return the chart to you with corrections.’ No knowledge and boundless conceit 🔗

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Conceit—so be it, it comes from youth, it will correct itself, if there’s any need for correction, but, on the other hand, an independent spirit, almost from childhood, a boldness of thought and conviction, and not the spirit of those sausage-makers groveling before the authorities 🔗

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It’s very good for you to get to know such beings, in order to learn to value many other things besides, which you will learn precisely from knowing these beings,” Alyosha observed warmly. “That will remake you more than anything.” 🔗

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What does it matter how many times a man is or seems to be ridiculous? Besides, nowadays almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it. 🔗

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“Oh, how I love you and value you right now, precisely because you, too, are ashamed of something with me! Because you’re just like me!” Kolya exclaimed, decidedly in ecstasy. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes shining.
“Listen, Kolya, by the way, you are going to be a very unhappy man in your life,” Alyosha suddenly said for some reason.
“I know, I know. How do you know all that beforehand!” Kolya confirmed at once.
“But on the whole you will bless life all the same.” 🔗

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“Don’t worry, leech, my dog won’t bite you,” Kolya cut in abruptly, having noticed the doctor’s somewhat anxious look at Perezvon 🔗

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What hurts me is not that he’s jealous of me, such as I am; it would hurt me if he wasn’t jealous at all. I’m like that. I wouldn’t be hurt by his jealousy, I also have a cruel heart, I can be jealous myself. No, what hurts me is that he doesn’t love me at all and is being jealous on purpose now, that’s what. 🔗

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And that’s how it was, though I say it was Grigory, it was certainly Dmitri Fyodorovich, and that’s much, much better! Oh, not better because a son killed his father, I’m not praising that; on the contrary, children should honor their parents; but still it’s better if it was he, because then there’s nothing to weep about, because he was beside himself when he did it, or, rather, he was within himself, but didn’t know what was happening to him. No, let them forgive him; it’s so humane, and everyone will see this blessing of the new courts 🔗

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who isn’t in a fit of passion these days—you, me, we’re all in a fit of passion, there are so many examples: a man sits singing some old song, and suddenly something annoys him, he takes out a gun and shoots whoever happens to be there, and then they all forgive him. 🔗

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“What? How? When?” Alyosha was terribly surprised. He did not sit down again, but listened standing. 🔗

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Alyosha, why don’t I respect you? I love you very much, but I don’t respect you. If I respected you, I wouldn’t talk like this without being ashamed, would I?” 🔗

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“I wanted to tell you a wish of mine. I want someone to torment me, to marry me and then torment me, deceive me, leave me and go away. I don’t want to be happy!”
“You’ve come to love disorder?”
“Ah, I want disorder. I keep wanting to set fire to the house. I imagine how I’ll sneak up and set fire to it on the sly, it must be on the sly. They’ll try to put it out, but it will go on burning. And I’ll know and say nothing. Ah, what foolishness! And so boring!”
She waved her hand in disgust.
“It’s your rich life,” Alyosha said softly.
“Why, is it better to be poor?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Your deceased monk filled you with all that. It’s not true. Let me be rich and everyone else poor, I’ll eat candy and drink cream, and I won’t give any to any of them. Ah, don’t speak, don’t say anything,” she waved her hand, though Alyosha had not even opened his mouth, “you’ve told me all that before, I know it all by heart. Boring. If I’m ever poor, I’ll kill somebody—and maybe I’ll kill somebody even if I’m rich—why just sit there? But, you know, what I want is to reap, to reap the rye. I’ll marry you, and you’ll become a peasant, a real peasant, we’ll keep a colt, would you like that? Do you know Kalganov?” 🔗

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“Why do evil?”
“So that there will be nothing left anywhere. Ah, how good it would be if there were nothing left! You know, Alyosha, I sometimes think about doing an awful lot of evil, all sorts of nasty things, and I’d be doing them on the sly for a long time, and suddenly everyone would find out. They would all surround me and point their fingers at me, and I would look at them all. That would be very pleasant. Why would it be so pleasant, Alyosha?” 🔗

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“I want to ruin myself. There’s a boy here, and he lay down under the rails while a train rode over him. Lucky boy! Listen, your brother is on trial now for killing his father, and they all love it that he killed his father.”
“They love it that he killed his father?”
“They love it, they all love it! Everyone says it’s terrible, but secretly they all love it terribly. I’m the first to love it.”
“There’s some truth in what you say about everyone,” Alyosha said softly. 🔗

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Ah, I’ll tell you a funny dream of mine: sometimes I have a dream about devils, it seems to be night, I’m in my room with a candle, and suddenly there are devils everywhere, in all the corners, and under the tables, and they open the door, and outside the door there’s a crowd of them, and they want to come in and grab me. And they’re coming close, they’re about to grab me. But I suddenly cross myself and they all draw back, afraid, only they don’t quite go away, they stand by the door and in the corners, waiting. And suddenly I have a terrible desire to start abusing God out loud, and so I start abusing him, and they suddenly rush at me again in a crowd, they’re so glad, and they’re grabbing me again, and I suddenly cross myself again—and they all draw back. It’s such terrible fun; it takes my breath away.”
“I’ve sometimes had the same dream,” Alyosha said suddenly. 🔗

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“I have a book here, I read in it about some trial somewhere, and that a Jew first cut off all the fingers of a four-year-old boy, and then crucified him on the wall, nailed him with nails and crucified him, and then said at his trial that the boy died quickly, in four hours. Quickly! He said the boy was moaning, that he kept moaning, and he stood and admired it. That’s good!”
“Good?”
“Good. Sometimes I imagine that it was I who crucified him. He hangs there moaning, and I sit down facing him, eating pineapple compote. I like pineapple compote very much. Do you?” 🔗

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“He doesn’t despise anyone,” Alyosha went on, “he simply doesn’t believe anyone. And since he doesn’t believe them, he also, of course, despises them.”
“That means me, too? Me?”
“You, too.”
“That’s good,” Liza somehow rasped. “When he walked out laughing, I felt it was good to be despised. The boy with his fingers cut off is good, and to be despised is good …”
And she laughed in Alyosha’s face, somehow wickedly and feverishly. 🔗

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And Liza, as soon as Alyosha was gone, unlocked the door at once, opened it a little, put her finger into the chink, and, slamming the door, crushed it with all her might. Ten seconds later, having released her hand, she went quietly and slowly to her chair, sat straight up in it, and began looking intently at her blackened finger and the blood oozing from under the nail. Her lips trembled, and she whispered very quickly to herself:
“Mean, mean, mean, mean!.” 🔗

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I look at something with my eyes, like this, and they start trembling, these little tails … and when they tremble, an image appears, not at once, but in a moment, it takes a second, and then a certain moment appears, as it were, that is, not a moment—devil take the moment—but an image, that is, an object or an event, well, devil take it—and that’s why I contemplate, and then think … because of the little tails, and not at all because I have a soul or am some sort of image and likeness,6 that’s all foolishness. 🔗

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Mitya hurriedly pulled a piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket and read:
“‘In order to resolve this question it is necessary, first of all, to put one’s person in conflict with one’s actuality.’ Do you understand that?”
“No, I don’t,” said Alyosha.
He was watching Mitya and listened to him with curiosity.
“I don’t understand it either. Obscure and vague, but intelligent. ‘Everybody writes like that now,’ he says, ‘because it’s that sort of environment …’ They’re afraid of the environment. 🔗

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Why did I have a dream about a ‘wee one’ at such a moment? ‘Why is the wee one poor?’ It was a prophecy to me at that moment! It’s for the ‘wee one’ that I will go. Because everyone is guilty for everyone else. For all the ‘wee ones,’ because there are little children and big children. All people are ‘wee ones.’ And I’ll go for all of them, because there must be someone who will go for all of them. I didn’t kill father, but I must go. I accept! 🔗

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“You wouldn’t believe, Alexei, how I want to live now, what thirst to exist and be conscious has been born in me precisely within these peeling walls! 🔗

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And it seems to me there’s so much strength in me now that I can overcome everything, all sufferings, only in order to say and tell myself every moment: I am! In a thousand torments—I am; writhing under torture—but I am. Locked up in a tower, but still I exist, I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, still I know it is. And the whole of life is there—in knowing that the sun is. 🔗

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And I’m tormented by God. Tormented only by that. What if he doesn’t exist? What if Rakitin is right, that it’s an artificial idea of mankind? So then, if he doesn’t exist, man is chief of the earth, of the universe. Splendid! Only how is he going to be virtuous without God? A good question! I keep thinking about it. Because whom will he love then—man, I mean? To whom will he be thankful, to whom will he sing the hymn? Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says it’s possible to love mankind even without God. Well, only a snotty little shrimp can affirm such a thing, but I can’t understand it. Life is simple for Rakitin: ‘You’d do better to worry about extending man’s civil rights,’ he told me today, ‘or at least about not letting the price of beef go up; you’d render your love for mankind more simply and directly that way than with any philosophies.’ But I came back at him: ‘And without God,’ I said, ‘you’ll hike up the price of beef yourself, if the chance comes your way, and make a rouble on every kopeck.’ He got angry. Because what is virtue?—answer me that, Alexei. I have one virtue and a Chinese has another—so it’s a relative thing. Or not? Not relative? Insidious question! 🔗

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Ivan does not have God. He has his idea. Not on my scale. But he’s silent. I think he’s a freemason. I asked him—he’s silent. I hoped to drink from the waters of his source—he’s silent. Only once did he say something.”
“What did he say?” Alyosha picked up hastily.
“I said to him: ‘Then everything is permitted, in that case?’ He frowned: ‘Fyodor Pavlovich, our papa, was a little pig,’ he said, ‘but his thinking was right.’ That’s what he came back with. That’s all he ever said. It’s even neater than Rakitin.” 🔗

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“God save you, dear boy, from ever asking forgiveness for your guilt from a woman you love! Especially from a woman you love, no matter how guilty you are before her! Because a woman—devil knows what a woman is, brother, I’m a good judge of that at least! Try going and confessing your guilt to her; say, ‘I’m guilty, forgive me, pardon me,’ and right then and there you’ll be showered with reproaches! She’ll never forgive you directly and simply, she’ll humble you in the dust, she’ll take away things that weren’t even there, she’ll take everything 🔗

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Ivan is the highest of us, you are my cherub. Only your decision will decide it. Maybe it’s you who are the highest man, and not Ivan. 🔗

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On the other hand, what about my conscience? I’ll be running away from suffering! I was shown a path—and I rejected the path; there was a way of purification—I did an about-face. Ivan says that a man ‘with good inclinations’ can be of more use in America than under the ground. Well, and where will our underground hymn take place? Forget America, America means vanity again! 🔗

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“You’re right,” Alyosha decided, “it’s impossible to decide before the sentence. After the trial you will decide yourself; you’ll find a new man in yourself then, and he will decide.” 🔗

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“Now you’ve revived me … Would you believe it, up to now I was afraid to ask you, even you, you! Well, go, go! You’ve strengthened me for tomorrow, God bless you! Well, go, love Ivan!” was the last word that burst from Mitya. 🔗

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“Brother,” Alyosha called after him, “if anything happens to you today, think of me first of all … !”
But Ivan did not answer. Alyosha stood at the crossroads under the streetlamp until Ivan disappeared completely into the darkness. 🔗

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in the very first days after his return from Moscow, he gave himself wholly and irrevocably to his fiery and mad passion for Katerina Ivanovna. This is not the proper place to begin speaking of this new passion of Ivan Fyodorovich’s, which later affected his whole life: it could all serve as the plot for another story, for a different novel, which I do not even know that I shall ever undertake. 🔗

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“You were right, by the way, there was nothing to guess at. But didn’t you also think then that I was precisely wishing for ‘viper to eat viper’—that is, precisely for Dmitri to kill father, and the sooner the better … and that I myself would not even mind helping him along?”
Alyosha turned slightly pale and looked silently into his brother’s eyes. 🔗

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When Ivan finished reading the “document,” he stood up, convinced. So his brother was the murderer, and not Smerdyakov. Not Smerdyakov, and therefore not he, Ivan. 🔗

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apart from the main reason prompting him to take such a step, the cause also lay in a certain unhealing scratch left on his heart by one little remark of Smerdyakov’s, that it was supposedly in his, Ivan’s, interest that his brother be convicted, because then the amount of the inheritance for himself and Alyosha would go up from forty to sixty thousand. He decided to sacrifice thirty thousand from his own portion to arrange for Mitya’s escape. 🔗

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And suddenly it was she who exclaimed: “I myself went to see Smerdyakov!” Went when? Ivan knew nothing of it. So she was not so sure of Mitya’s guilt! And what could Smerdyakov have told her? What, what precisely did he tell her? Terrible wrath began burning in his heart. 🔗

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“You used to be brave once, sir, you used to say ‘Everything is permitted,’ sir, and now you’ve got so frightened!” 🔗

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as I see now, you really didn’t understand anything before this, and weren’t pretending so as to shift your obvious guilt onto me right to my face, still you are guilty of everything, sir, because you knew about the murder, and you told me to kill him, sir, and, knowing everything, you left. Therefore I want to prove it to your face tonight that in all this the chief murderer is you alone, sir, and I’m just not the real chief one, though I did kill him. It’s you who are the most lawful murderer!” 🔗

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“I’ve got no use at all for it, sir,” Smerdyakov said in a trembling voice, waving his hand. “There was such a former thought, sir, that I could begin a life on such money in Moscow, or even more so abroad, I did have such a dream, sir, and even more so as ‘everything is permitted.’ It was true what you taught me, sir, because you told me a lot about that then: because if there’s no infinite God, then there’s no virtue either, and no need of it at all. It was true. That’s how I reasoned.” 🔗

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“It can’t be. You’re too intelligent, sir. You love money, that I know, sir, you also love respect, because you’re very proud, you love women’s charms exceedingly, and most of all you love living in peaceful prosperity, without bowing to anyone—that you love most of all, sir. You won’t want to ruin your life forever by taking such shame upon yourself in court. You’re like Fyodor Pavlovich most of all, it’s you of all his children who came out resembling him most, having the same soul as him, sir.” 🔗

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But Ivan Fyodorovich was left feeling very pleased. His thoughts were expanding and working. “If my decision for tomorrow had not been taken so firmly,” he suddenly thought with delight, “I would not have stayed for a whole hour arranging things for the little peasant, I would simply have passed him by and not cared a damn whether he froze … I’m quite capable of observing myself, incidentally,” he thought at the same moment, with even greater delight, “and they all decided I was losing my mind!” 🔗

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Ivan grinned, but an angry flush covered his face. He sat where he was for a long time, his head propped firmly on both hands, but still looking sideways at the former spot, at the sofa standing against the opposite wall. Apparently something there, some object, irritated him, troubled him, tormented him. 🔗

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during those approaching fatal moments of his life; he had to be personally present, to speak his word boldly and resolutely, and “vindicate himself to himself.” 🔗

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“what good is faith by force? Besides, proofs are no help to faith, especially material proofs. Thomas believed not because he saw the risen Christ but because he wanted to believe even before that.2 Spiritualists, for example … I like them so much … imagine, they think they’re serving faith because devils show their little horns to them from the other world. ‘This,’ they say, ‘is a material proof, so to speak, that the other world exists.’ The other world and material proofs, la-di-da! And, after all, who knows whether proof of the devil is also a proof of God? I want to join an idealist society and form an opposition within it: ‘I’m a realist,’ I’ll say, ‘not a materialist,’ heh, heh!” 🔗

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You are the embodiment of myself, but of just one side of me … of my thoughts and feelings, but only the most loathsome and stupid of them. 🔗

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People take this whole comedy for something serious, despite all their undeniable intelligence. That is their tragedy. Well, they suffer, of course, but … still they live, they live really, not in fantasy; for suffering is life. 🔗

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“Well, so is he still lying there?”
“The point is that he isn’t. He lay there for nearly a thousand years, and then got up and started walking.”
“What an ass!” Ivan exclaimed, bursting into nervous laughter, still apparently trying hard to figure something out. “Isn’t it all the same whether he lies there forever or walks a quadrillion kilometers? It must be about a billion years’ walk!”
“Much more, even. If we had a pencil and paper, we could work it out. But he arrived long ago, and this is where the anecdote begins.” 🔗

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“Precisely. But hesitation, anxiety, the struggle between belief and disbelief—all that is sometimes such a torment for a conscientious man like yourself, that it’s better to hang oneself. Precisely because I knew you had a tiny bit of belief in me, I let in some final disbelief, by telling you that anecdote. I’m leading you alternately between belief and disbelief, and I have my own purpose in doing so. A new method, sir: when you’ve completely lost faith in me, then you’ll immediately start convincing me to my face that I am not a dream but a reality—I know you now; and then my goal will be achieved. And it is a noble goal. I will sow just a tiny seed of faith in you, and from it an oak will grow—and such an oak that you, sitting in that oak, will want to join ‘the desert fathers and the blameless women’;16 because secretly you want that ver-ry, ver-ry much, you will dine on locusts, you will drag yourself to the desert to seek salvation!” 🔗

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One forgets the whole world and all worlds, and clings to such a one, because a diamond like that is just too precious; one such soul is sometimes worth a whole constellation—we have our own arithmetic. 🔗

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In my opinion, there is no need to destroy anything, one need only destroy the idea of God in mankind, that’s where the business should start! One should begin with that, with that—oh, blind men, of no understanding! Once mankind has renounced God, one and all (and I believe that this period, analogous to the geological periods, will come), then the entire old world view will fall of itself, without anthropophagy, and, above all, the entire former morality, and everything will be new. People will come together in order to take from life all that it can give, but, of course, for happiness and joy in this world only. Man will be exalted with the spirit of divine, titanic pride, and the man-god will appear. Man, his will and his science no longer limited, conquering nature every hour, will thereby every hour experience such lofty delight as will replace for him all his former hopes of heavenly delight. Each will know himself utterly mortal, without resurrection, and will accept death proudly and calmly, like a god. Out of pride he will understand that he should not murmur against the momentariness of life, and he will love his brother then without any reward. Love will satisfy only the moment of life, but the very awareness of its momentariness will increase its fire, inasmuch as previously it was diffused in hopes of an eternal love beyond the grave’ … well, and so on and so on, in the same vein. Lovely!” 🔗

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“‘The question now,’ my young thinker reflected, ‘is whether or not it is possible for such a period ever to come. If it does come, then everything will be resolved and mankind will finally be settled. But since, in view of man’s inveterate stupidity, it may not be settled for another thousand years, anyone who already knows the truth is permitted to settle things for himself, absolutely as he wishes, on the new principles. In this sense,”everything is permitted” to him. Moreover, since God and immortality do not exist in any case, even if this period should never come, the new man is allowed to become a man-god, though it be he alone in the whole world, and of course, in this new rank, to jump lightheartedly over any former moral obstacle of the former slave-man, if need be. There is no law for God! Where God stands—there is the place of God! Where I stand, there at once will be the foremost place … “everything is permitted,” and that’s that!’ It’s all very nice; 🔗

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“He taunted me! And cleverly, you know, very cleverly: ‘Conscience! What is conscience? I make it up myself. Why do I suffer then? Out of habit. Out of universal human habit over seven thousand years. So let us get out of the habit, and we shall be gods!’ He said that, he said that!” 🔗

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He was beginning to understand Ivan’s illness: “The torments of a proud decision, a deep conscience!” God, in whom he did not believe, and his truth were overcoming his heart, which still did not want to submit. “Yes,” it passed through Alyosha’s head, which was already lying on the pillow, “yes, with Smerdyakov dead, no one will believe Ivan’s testimony; but he will go and testify!” Alyosha smiled gently: “God will win!” he thought. “He will either rise into the light of truth, or … perish in hatred, taking revenge on himself and everyone for having served something he does not believe in,” Alyosha added bitterly, and again prayed for Ivan. 🔗

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The whole tragedy of the crime on trial he portrayed as resulting from the ingrained habits of serfdom and a Russia immersed in disorder and suffering from a lack of proper institutions. 🔗

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“How could this money possibly end up in your possession … if it is the same money?” the judge said in surprise.
“I got it from Smerdyakov, the murderer, yesterday. I visited him before he hanged himself. It was he who killed father, not my brother. He killed him, and killed him on my instructions … Who doesn’t wish for his father’s death …?”
“Are you in your right mind?” inadvertently escaped from the judge. 🔗

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“he kept trying to minimize his brother’s guilt, confessing to me that he had not loved his father either, and perhaps had wished for his death himself. Oh, he has a deep, deep conscience! He tormented himself with his conscience! 🔗

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No, no, she was not slandering him deliberately when she cried out that Mitya despised her for bowing to him! She believed it herself, she was deeply convinced, and had been perhaps from the moment of the bow itself, that the guileless Mitya, who adored her even then, was laughing at her and despised her. And only out of pride had she then attached herself to him with a hysterical and strained love, love out of wounded pride, a love that resembled not love but revenge. Oh, perhaps this strained love would have grown into real love, perhaps Katya wished for nothing else, but Mitya insulted her to the depths of her soul with his betrayal, and her soul did not forgive. The moment of revenge came unexpectedly, and everything that had been long and painfully accumulating in the offended woman’s breast burst out all at once and, again, unexpectedly. She betrayed Mitya, but she betrayed herself as well! And, naturally, as soon as she had spoken it out, the tension broke, and shame overwhelmed her. Hysterics began again, she collapsed, sobbing and screaming. She was taken away. 🔗

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“accursed” questions: God versus reason, human destiny, the future of Russia, and so forth; questions that concerned Dostoevsky himself 🔗

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For now we are either horrified or pretend that we are horrified, while, on the contrary, relishing the spectacle, like lovers of strong, eccentric sensations that stir our cynical and lazy idleness, or, finally, like little children waving the frightening ghosts away, and hiding our heads under the pillow until the frightening vision is gone, so as to forget it immediately afterwards in games and merriment. But should not we, too, some day begin to live soberly and thoughtfully; should not we, too, take a look at ourselves as a society; should not we, too, understand at least something of our social duty, or at least begin to understand? 🔗

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Yet she is here, our dear mother Russia, we can smell her, we can hear her. Oh, we are ingenuous, we are an amazing mixture of good and evil, we are lovers of enlightenment and Schiller, and at the same time we rage in taverns and tear out the beards of little drunkards, our tavern mates. Oh, we can also be good and beautiful, but only when we are feeling good and beautiful ourselves. We are, on the contrary, even possessed—precisely possessed—by the noblest ideals, but only on condition that they be attained by themselves, that they fall on our plate from the sky, and, above all, gratuitously, gratuitously, so that we need pay nothing for them. We like very much to get things, but terribly dislike having to pay for them, and so it is with everything. 🔗

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we are of a broad, Karamazovian nature—and this is what I am driving at—capable of containing all possible opposites and of contemplating both abysses at once, the abyss above us, an abyss of lofty ideals, and the abyss beneath us, an abyss of the lowest and foulest degradation. 🔗

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tormentress 🔗

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The point was not the money, but that by means of this very money his happiness was being shattered with such loathsome cynicism!” 🔗

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And so, precisely because of this mood, this insecurity, these questions, the spasm in the throat, which always precedes a falling fit, seizes him, and he topples headlong, unconscious, into the bottom of the cellar. 🔗

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all that to make it more convenient for himself to get up suddenly and then kill his master! 🔗

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And, hanging himself, he left a note, written in his own peculiar style: ‘I exterminate myself by my own will and liking, so as not to blame anybody.’ It would have cost him nothing to add: ‘I am the murderer, not Karamazov.’ But he did not add it: did he have enough conscience for the one thing, but not for the other? 🔗

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Were it Smerdyakov, for example, killing for the sake of robbery—why, he would simply have taken the whole envelope with him, without bothering in the least to open it over his victim’s body; because he knew for certain that the money was in the envelope—it had been put there and sealed in his presence—and if he had taken the envelope away altogether, would anyone even know there had been a robbery? 🔗

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All because it was Karamazov, not Smerdyakov; 🔗

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Karamazov understood it all, he understood that all paths were closed to him by his crime, and that he was just a criminal under sentence and not a man with a life ahead of him! This thought crushed and destroyed him. And so he instantly fixes on a wild plan that, considering Karamazov’s character, could not but seem to him the only and fatal way out of his terrible situation. This way out was suicide. He runs for his pistols, which he had pawned to the official Perkhotin, and at the same time, as he runs, he pulls all his money out of his pocket, for which he had just spattered his hands with his father’s blood. Oh, money is what he needs most of all now: Karamazov dies, Karamazov shoots himself, this will be remembered! Not for nothing are we a poet, not for nothing have we been burning our life like a candle at both ends. ‘To her, to her—and there, there I will put on a feast, a feast such as the world has never seen, to be remembered and talked about long after. Amid wild shouts, mad gypsy singing and dancing, we will raise a cup and toast the new happiness of the woman we adore, and then—right there, at her feet, we will blow our brains out before her, and punish our life! Some day she will remember Mitya Karamazov, she will see how Mitya loved her, she will feel sorry for Mitya!’ There is a good deal of posturing here, of romantic frenzy, of wild Karamazovian unrestraint and sentimentality—yes, and also something else, gentlemen of the jury, something that cries out in the soul, that throbs incessantly in his mind, and poisons his heart unto death; this something is conscience, gentlemen of the jury, the judgment, the terrible pangs of conscience! But the pistol will reconcile everything, the pistol is the only way out, there is no other, and beyond—I do not know whether Karamazov thought at that moment of ‘what lies beyond’1 or whether a Karamazov could think, in Hamlet fashion, of what lies beyond. No, gentlemen of the jury, they have their Hamlets, but so far we have only Karamazovs!” 🔗

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I picture to myself the state of the criminal’s soul at that time as an indisputable slavish submission to three elements that overwhelmed it completely: first, a state of drunkenness, daze and noise, feet pounding, singers wailing, and she, she, flushed with wine, singing and dancing, drunk and laughing to him! Second, the remote, encouraging dream that the fatal ending was still a long way off, was at least not near—perhaps only the next day, only in the morning, would they come and take him. Several hours, then—a long time, terribly long! One can think up a lot in several hours. He felt, as I picture it to myself, something similar to what a criminal feels on his way to execution, to the gallows: he still has to go down a long, long street, and at a slow pace, past thousands of people, then turn down another street, and only at the end of that other street—the terrible square! I precisely think that at the start of the procession the condemned man, sitting in the cart of shame, must feel precisely that there is still an endless life ahead of him. Now, however, the houses are going past, the cart is moving on—oh, that’s nothing, it’s still such a long way to the turn down the second street, and so he still looks cheerfully to right and left at those thousands of indifferently curious people whose eyes are fastened on him, and he still fancies he is the same sort of man as they are. But here comes the turn down the other street—oh, it’s nothing, nothing, still a whole street to go. And no matter how many houses pass by, he will keep thinking: ‘There are still a lot of houses left.’ And so on to the very end, to the very square. So it was then, as I picture it to myself, with Karamazov. 🔗

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Yes, here, at this moment, you represent Russia, and your verdict will resound not only in this courtroom but for all of Russia, and all of Russia will listen to you as to her defenders and judges, and will be either heartened or discouraged by your verdict. Then do not torment Russia and her expectations, our fateful troika is racing headlong, perhaps to its destruction. And all over Russia hands have long been held out and voices have been calling to halt its wild, impudent course. 🔗

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We have already heard such anxious voices from Europe. They are already beginning to speak out. Do not tempt them, do not add to their ever-increasing hatred with a verdict justifying the murder of a father by his own son … !” 🔗

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“Yes, clever. And he had to tell it again. He’s already told it all over town.”
“And now he just couldn’t resist. Vanity.”
“An offended man, heh, heh!”
“Quick to take offense, too. And too much rhetoric, long phrases.”
“And browbeating, did you notice how he kept browbeating us? Remember the troika? ‘They have their Hamlets, but so far we have only Karamazovs! ’ That was clever.”
“Courting liberalism. Afraid.” 🔗

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“But that was good about the troika, the part about the other nations.”
“And it’s true, remember, where he said the other nations won’t wait.”
“What do you mean?”
“In the English Parliament just last week one member stood up, to do with the nihilists, and asked the Ministry if it wasn’t time to intervene in a barbarous nation, in order to educate us. It was him Ippolit meant, I know it was him. He talked about it last week.” 🔗

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The defendant, a man of stormy and unbridled character 🔗

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I myself, gentlemen of the jury, have resorted to psychology now, in order to demonstrate that one can draw whatever conclusions one likes from it. It all depends on whose hands it is in. Psychology prompts novels even from the most serious people, and quite unintentionally. I am speaking of excessive psychology, gentlemen of the jury, of a certain abuse of it.” 🔗

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But you yourself were shouting that Karamazov is broad, you yourself were shouting about the two extreme abysses Karamazov can contemplate. Karamazov is precisely of such a nature, with two sides, two abysses, as can stop amid the most unrestrained need of carousing if something strikes him on the other side. And the other side is love, precisely this new love that flared up in him like powder, and for this love he needs money, he has more need of it, oh! much more need of it even than of carousing with this same beloved. 🔗

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On these two words—since he was, it also inevitably means—everything, the entire accusation, rests: ‘He was, therefore it means.’ And what if it does not mean, even though he was? 🔗

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Excuse me, but conscience implies repentance, and it may be that the suicide was not repentant but simply in despair. Despair and repentance are two totally different things. Despair can be malicious and implacable, and the suicide, as he was taking his life, may at that moment have felt twice as much hatred for those whom he had envied all his life. 🔗

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Yes, these hearts—oh, let me defend these hearts, which are so rarely and so wrongly understood—these hearts quite often thirst for what is tender, for what is beautiful and righteous, precisely the contrary, as it were, of themselves, of their storminess, their cruelty—thirst for it unconsciously, precisely thirst for it. Outwardly passionate and cruel, they are capable, for instance, of loving a woman to the point of torment, and inevitably with a lofty and spiritual love. 🔗

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Love for a father that is not justified by the father is an absurdity, an impossibility. Love cannot be created out of nothing: only God creates out of nothing. ‘Fathers, provoke not your children,’ writes the apostle,2 from a heart aflame with love. 🔗

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Let us first fulfill Christ’s commandment ourselves, and only then let us expect the same of our children. Otherwise we are not fathers but enemies of our children, and they are not our children but our enemies, and we ourselves have made them our enemies! ‘With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you’ 🔗

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within this sphere, if we wish to be humane, to be Christians finally, it is our duty and obligation to foster only those convictions that are justified by reason and experience, that have passed through the crucible of analysis, in a word, to act sensibly and not senselessly as in dreams or delirium, so as not to bring harm to a man, so as not to torment and ruin a man. Then, then it will be a real Christian deed, not only a mystical one, but a sensible and truly philanthropic deed …” 🔗

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overwhelm him with your mercy! You will see, you will hear how his soul will tremble and be horrified: ‘Is it for me to endure this mercy, for me to be granted so much love, and am I worthy of it?’ he will exclaim! Oh, I know, I know that heart, it is a wild but noble heart, gentlemen of the jury. It will bow down before your deed, it thirsts for a great act of love, it will catch fire and resurrect forever. There are souls that in their narrowness blame the whole world. But overwhelm such a soul with mercy, give it love, and it will curse what it has done, for there are so many germs of good in it. The soul will expand and behold how merciful God is, and how beautiful and just people are. He will be horrified, he will be overwhelmed with repentance and the countless debt he must henceforth repay. And then he will not say, ‘I am quits,’ but will say, ‘I am guilty before all people and am the least worthy of all people.’ In tears of repentance and burning, suffering tenderness he will exclaim: ‘People are better than I, for they wished not to ruin but to save me!’ 🔗

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“Ilyushechka told me, Ilyushechka,” he exclaimed at once to Alyosha, “he was lying there one night, and I was sitting by him, and he suddenly told me: ‘Papa, when they put the dirt on my grave, crumble a crust of bread on it so the sparrows will come, and I’ll hear that they’ve come and be glad that I’m not lying alone.’”
“That’s a very good thing,” said Alyosha, “you must do it more often.”
“Every day, every day!” the captain babbled, brightening all over, as it were. 🔗

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“It’s all so strange, Karamazov, such grief, and then pancakes all of a sudden—how unnatural it all is in our religion!” 🔗

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And even though we may be involved with the most important affairs, achieve distinction or fall into some great misfortune—all the same, let us never forget how good we once felt here, all together, united by such good and kind feelings as made us, too, for the time that we loved the poor boy, perhaps better than we actually are. 🔗

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You must know that there is nothing higher, or stronger, or sounder, or more useful afterwards in life, than some good memory, especially a memory from childhood, from the parental home. You hear a lot said about your education, yet some such beautiful, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man stores up many such memories to take into life, then he is saved for his whole life. And even if only one good memory remains with us in our hearts, that alone may serve some day for our salvation. 🔗

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“but why should we become bad, gentlemen, isn’t that true? Let us first of all and before all be kind, then honest, and then—let us never forget one another. 🔗