“Know then that there is nothing more lofty, nor more powerful, not more healthy nor more useful later in life than some good memory, and particularly one that has been borne from childhood, from one’s parents’ home. Much is said to you about your education, but a beautiful, sacred memory like that, one preserved from childhood, is possibly the very best education of all.”
Posts Tagged ‘Dostoyevsky’
The Brothers Karamazov
January 31, 2009“Oh, we are spontaneous, we are good and evil in an astonishing blend, we are lovers of enlightenment and Schiller and at the same time we go rampaging around the inns and tearing out the beards of the drunken sots, our boon companions. Oh, we too are good and beautiful, but only when we ourselves feel good and beautiful. Indeed, we are positively tempested – yes, tempested – by the most noble ideals, but only upon condition that they be attained of themselves, fall down upon our tables from the sky, and above all that they be gratis, gratis, so that nothing must be paid for them. Paying is something we dislike horribly, while on the other hand we love to receive, and this in everything. Oh, give us, give us every possible blessing of life (it must be every possible one, for more cheaply we will not be reconciled) and in particular do not hinder our disposition in any way, and then we too shall demonstrate that we are able to be good and beautiful.”
The Brothers Karamazov
January 31, 2009“In my view it is not necessary to destroy anything, all that need be destroyed in mankind is the idea of God, that is what one must proceed from! It is with that, with that one must begin – O, blind ones, who understand nothing! Once mankind, each and individually, has repudiated God (and I believe that that period, in a fashion parallel to the geological periods, will arrive), then of its own accord, and without the need of anthropophagy, the whole of the former world-outlook and, above all, the whole of the former morality, will collapse, and all will begin anew. People will unite together in order to take from life all that it is able to give, but only for the sake of happiness and joy inthis world. Man will exalt himself with a spirit of devine, titanic pride, and the man-god will appear. Vanquishing nature hour by hour, already without limits, by his will and science, man will thereby experience, hour by hour, a pleasure so elevated that it will replace all his former hopes of celestial pleasure. Every man will discover that he is wholly mortal, without the possibility of resurrection, and will accept death proudly and calmly, like a god. Out of pride he will grasp that there is no point in him complaining that life is a moment, and he will come to love his brother without any need of recompense. The love will only be sufficient for the moment of life, but the very consciousness of life’s momentariness will intensify its fire just as much as it formerly ran to fat in hopes of an infinite love beyond the grave.”
The Brothers Karamazov
January 31, 2009“But you see, you are still thinking in terms of the earth we have at present! Why, the earth we have at present may have repeated itself a billion times; you know – become extinct, frozen over, cracked, crumbled to pieces, disintegrated into its constituent origins, becoming the waters again, ‘which were above the firmament,’ then a comet again, then a sun, then another earth produced from that sun – I mean, this process of development may already have repeated itself an infinite number of times, and always in the same form, right down to the very last small detail.”
The Brothers Karamazov
January 31, 2009“Je pense, donc je suis, that is the one thing I know for sure, and as for all the rest of what surrounds me, all these worlds, God and even Satan himself – for me it remains unproven whether all that exists in itself or is merely a certain emanation of mine, the logical development of my I, which has a pre-temporal and individual existence…”
The Brothers Karamazov
January 31, 2009“In any case, what is suffering? I am not afraid of it, even though it be numberless. Now I am not afraid, though before I was. You know, I may not even answer at my trial…And it seems to me that there is so much of this strength in me now that I shall vanquish everything, all of the suffering, only so that I may keep saying to myself constantly: ‘I am!’ I may endure a thousand torments – yet I am, I may writhe under torture – but I am! I may sit in a tower, but I exist, I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there – that is already the whole of life.”
The Brothers Karamazov
January 31, 2009“Gentlemen, we are all of us cruel, we are all of us monsters of cruelty, we all of us drive men, mothers and babes at the breast to tears, but of us all – so let it be decided now – of us all I am the most villainous reptile! So be it! Each day of my life, beating my breast, I have promised to mend my ways and each day of it I have committed the same loathsome deeds. I understand now that what a man such as I requires is a blow, a blow of fate, that will seize him as in a lasso and bind him by external force. Never, never would I have picked myself up of my own accord! But the thunder has spoken. I accept the torment of the charge and of my disgrace before the nation, I wish to suffer and to purify myself through suffering.”
The Brothers Karamazov
January 31, 2009“Think about it: what contempt can there be, when we’re just the same as he is, when everyone’s the same as he is? For I mean, we’re all like him, no better. And even if we were better, we’d still behave like him if we were in his position…You know, Lise, my Elder once told me: ‘People must be looked after in every respect as though they were children, and some as though they were patients in hospital…’”
The Brothers Karamazov
January 31, 2009“Let us assume, for example, that I suffer deeply – yet I mean, another person would never be able to perceive the degree to which I suffer, because he is another person, and not me, and on top of that it’s seldom that a person will agree to recognize another as a sufferer (as thought it were some kind of rank). Why won’t he agree to it, do you suppose? Because, for example, I smell bad, or have a stupid expression on my face, or because I once trod on his toes. What’s more, there is suffering and suffering: degrading suffering that degrades me – hunger, for example – is something that my benefactor will permit in me, but let the suffering be of ever such a slightly loftier sort, such as for an idea, for example, then no, only in very rare cases will he permit that, because he may, for example, look at me and suddenly perceive that the expression on my face is not at all like the one his fantasy supposes ought to be on the face of someone who is suffering for an idea. So he then at once deprives me of his beneficent deeds, though he does so not at all from any rancour of heart.”
The Brothers Karamazov
January 31, 2009“Each now strives to isolate his person as much as possible from the others, wishing to experience within himself life’s completeness, yet from all his efforts there results not life’s completeness but a complete suicide, for instead of discovering the true nature of their being they lapse into total solitariness. For in our era all are isolated into individuals, each retires solitary within his burrow, each withdraws from the other, conceals himself and that which he possesses and ends by being rejected of men and by rejecting them. He amasses wealth in solitariness, thinking: how strong I am now and how secure, yet he does not know, the witless one, that the more he amasses, the further he will sink into suicidal impotence. For he has become accustomed to relying upon himself alone and has isolated himself from the whole as an individual, has trained his soul not to trust in help from others, in human beings and mankind, and is fearful only of losing his money and privileges he has acquired. In every place today the human mind is mockingly starting to lose its awareness of the fact that a person’s true security consists not in his own personal, solitary effort, but in the common integrity of human kind.”
