The Karamazov Brothers (Oxford World's Classics)

‘You’re like all of them,’ concluded Alyosha, ‘that is, you’re like a lot of people, only you don’t have to be like them, like everyone, that’s all.’ ‘Even in spite of the fact that everyone’s like that?’

Let her, if she will, forgive him her own suffering, her own extreme anguish as a mother, but she has no right to forgive the suffering of her mutilated child; even if the child himself forgives, she has no right! And if that is so, if the right to forgive does not exist, then where is harmony?

We shall permit or forbid them to live with their wives and mistresses, to have children or not to have them—subject to their obedience—and they will submit to us cheerfully and willingly. They will bring us their most tormenting problems of conscience—everything, they will bring everything to us and we shall resolve everything, and they will accep

I want to stick to facts. I gave up trying to understand long ago. As soon as I feel I want to understand something I immediately have to renounce facts, whereas I have decided to stay true to facts…’

With people it’s all a question of what they’re used to, even in the matter of the state and politics. Habit is the prime mover.

He prided himself on his ability to judge by appearances, a pardonable weakness in one who was already fifty—an age when an intelligent, well-to-do man of the world always starts to take himself seriously, sometimes even against his better judgement.

Reverend starets, forgive that last bit about Diderot’s baptism, I made it up myself just now, even as I was telling it to you, it had never entered my head before. I made it up just to please you. I carry on like that, Pyotr Aleksandrovich, so that people’ll like me all the more. But then sometimes I don’t know myself why I do it.

One can retain precious memories of even the worst families provided one’s soul is capable of seeking out what is precious.

I’m a flea on the face of the earth, and I admit in all humility that I cannot understand in the least why things are the way they are.

cloying, affected tenor voice. Suddenly, another