Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“ If I run away, even with money and a passport, and even to America, I should be cheered up by the thought that I am not running away for pleasure, not for happiness, but to another exile as bad, perhaps, as Siberia. It is as bad, Alyosha, it is! I hate that America, damn it, already. Even though Grusha will be with me. Just look at her; is she an American? She is Russian, Russian to the marrow of her bones; she will be homesick for the mother country, and I shall see every hour that she is suffering for my sake, that she has taken up that cross for me. ”

“ Ivan is not Rakitin, there is an idea in him. Ivan is a sphinx and is silent; he is always silent. It's God that's worrying me. That's the only thing that's worrying me. What if He doesn't exist? What if Rakitin's right—that it's an idea made up by men? Then if He doesn't exist, man is the chief of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God? That's the question. I always come back to that. For whom is man going to love then? To whom will he be thankful? To whom will he sing the hymn? Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says that one can love humanity without God. ”

“ Because you are just like me,” cried Kolya, in positive ecstasy. His cheeks glowed, his eyes beamed.
“You know, Kolya, you will be very unhappy in your life,” something made Alyosha say suddenly.
“I know, I know. How you know it all beforehand!” Kolya agreed at once.
“But you will bless life on the whole, all the same.”
“Just so, hurrah! You are a prophet. Oh, we shall get on together, Karamazov! Do you know, what delights me most, is that you treat me quite like an equal. But we are not equals, no, we are not, you are better! But we shall get on. ”

“ Prosecutor, have you not invented a new personality? Is the prisoner so coarse and heartless as to be able to think at that moment of love and of dodges to escape punishment, if his hands were really stained with his father's blood? No, no, no! As soon as it was made plain to him that she loved him and called him to her side, promising him new happiness, oh! then, I protest he must have felt the impulse to suicide doubled, trebled, and must have killed himself, if he had his father's murder on his conscience. Oh, no! he would not have forgotten where his pistols lay! ”

“ For Grusha I would bear anything ... anything except blows.... But she won’t be allowed to come there.”
Alyosha smiled gently.
“Listen, brother, once for all,” he said. “This is what I think about it. And you know that I would not tell you a lie. Listen: you are not ready, and such a cross is not for you. What’s more, you don’t need such a martyr’s cross when you are not ready for it. If you had murdered our father, it would grieve me that you should reject your punishment. But you are innocent, and such a cross is too much for you. You wanted to make yourself another man by suffering. ”

“ Rakitin got up.
“It’s time we were off,” he said, “it’s late, we shall be shut out of the monastery.”
Grushenka leapt up from her place.
“Surely you don’t want to go, Alyosha!” she cried, in mournful surprise. “What are you doing to me? You’ve stirred up my feeling, tortured me, and now you’ll leave me to face this night alone!”
“He can hardly spend the night with you! Though if he wants to, let him! I’ll go alone,” Rakitin scoffed jeeringly.
“Hush, evil tongue!” Grushenka cried angrily at him; “you never said such words to me as he has come to say.” ”

“ The centripetal force on our planet is still fearfully strong, Alyosha. I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves you know sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I've long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from old habit one's heart prizes them. Here they have brought the soup for you, eat it, it will do you good. ”

“ And I seem to have such strength in me now, that I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, ‘I exist.’ In thousands of agonies—I exist. I'm tormented on the rack—but I exist! Though I sit alone on a pillar—I exist! I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there. Alyosha, my angel, all these philosophies are the death of me. Damn them! Brother Ivan—”
“What of brother Ivan?” interrupted Alyosha, but Mitya did not hear. ”

“ Smerdyakov stared at him, not simply with contempt, but almost with repulsion. “Is this because the trial begins to-morrow? Nothing will happen to you; can't you believe that at last? Go home, go to bed and sleep in peace, don't be afraid of anything.”
“I don't understand you.... What have I to be afraid of to-morrow?” Ivan articulated in astonishment, and suddenly a chill breath of fear did in fact pass over his soul. Smerdyakov measured him with his eyes.
“You don't understand?” he drawled reproachfully. “It's a strange thing a sensible man should care to play such a farce!” ”

“ Do you understand that, friend and brother, you pious and humble novice? Do you understand why this infamy must be and is permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much? Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to ‘dear, kind God’! I say nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have eaten the apple, damn them, and the devil take them all! But these little ones! I am making you suffer, Alyosha, you are not yourself. ”

“ What struck Alyosha above everything was her earnestness. There was not a trace of humor or jesting in her face now, though, in old days, fun and gayety never deserted her even at her most “earnest” moments.
“There are moments when people love crime,” said Alyosha thoughtfully.
“Yes, yes! You have uttered my thought; they love crime, every one loves crime, they love it always, not at some ‘moments.’ You know, it’s as though people have made an agreement to lie about it and have lied about it ever since. They all declare that they hate evil, but secretly they all love it.” ”

“ Alyosha went on as though he had not heard Lise, “that she loved Ivan, and so I said that stupid thing.... What will happen now?”
“To whom, to whom?” cried Lise. “Mamma, you really want to be the death of me. I ask you and you don't answer.”
At the moment the maid ran in.
“Katerina Ivanovna is ill.... She is crying, struggling ... hysterics.”
“What is the matter?” cried Lise, in a tone of real anxiety. “Mamma, I shall be having hysterics, and not she!”
“Lise, for mercy's sake, don't scream, don't persecute me. At your age one can't know everything that grown-up people know. ”

“ Perhaps we may even grow wicked later on, may be unable to refrain from a bad action, may laugh at men’s tears and at those people who say as Kolya did just now, ‘I want to suffer for all men,’ and may even jeer spitefully at such people. But however bad we may become—which God forbid—yet, when we recall how we buried Ilusha, how we loved him in his last days, and how we have been talking like friends all together, at this stone, the cruelest and most mocking of us—if we do become so—will not dare to laugh inwardly at having been kind and good at this moment! ”

“ I am convinced that he did that from ‘self-laceration,’ from the self-laceration of falsity, for the sake of the charity imposed by duty, as a penance laid on him. For any one to love a man, he must be hidden, for as soon as he shows his face, love is gone.”
“Father Zossima has talked of that more than once,” observed Alyosha; “he, too, said that the face of a man often hinders many people not practiced in love, from loving him. But yet there's a great deal of love in mankind, and almost Christ-like love. I know that myself, Ivan.” ”

“ Believe that God loves you as you cannot conceive; that He loves you with your sin, in your sin. It has been said of old that over one repentant sinner there is more joy in heaven than over ten righteous men. Go, and fear not. Be not bitter against men. Be not angry if you are wronged. Forgive the dead man in your heart what wrong he did you. Be reconciled with him in truth. If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner, even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God. ”

“ But the prisoner even then did not murder him—I maintain that, I cry that aloud!—no, he only brandished the pestle in a burst of indignant disgust, not meaning to kill him, not knowing that he would kill him. Had he not had this fatal pestle in his hand, he would have only knocked his father down perhaps, but would not have killed him. As he ran away, he did not know whether he had killed the old man. Such a murder is not a murder. Such a murder is not a parricide. No, the murder of such a father cannot be called parricide. Such a murder can only be reckoned parricide by prejudice. ”