Yes, we shall require them to work, but in their free time we shall devise for them a life such as a child’s game, with children’s songs in chorus and innocent dances. Oh, we shall even allow them to sin, for they are weak and feeble, and for having been allowed to sin they will love us in the way that children do. We shall tell them that every sin

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.

We often talk of man’s “bestial” cruelty, but this is terribly unjust and insulting to beasts: a wild animal can never be as cruel as man, as artistic, as refined in his cruelty.

‘I think that if the devil didn’t exist and if man has created him, then he has created him in his own image and likeness.’

The important thing is not to lie to yourself. He who lies to himself and listens to his own lies reaches a state in which he no longer recognizes truth either in himself or in others, and so he ceases to respect both himself and others.

am glad my young hero did not turn out to be too rational at such a moment, since there will always be plenty of opportunity for an intelligent person to employ his intellect, but if love did not hold sway in his heart at such an exceptional moment, would it ever do so?

We have reached a stage at which we have surrounded ourselves with more things, but have less joy.

‘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?’

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.