Dorina A.

“But not your soul, Pyotr Alexandrovitch; you’re not a lodging worth having either. But I do believe—I believe in God, though I have had doubts of late. But now I sit and await words of wisdom. I’m like the philosopher, Diderot, your reverence. Did you ever hear, most Holy Father, how Diderot went to sec the Metropolitan Platon, in the time of the Empress Catherine. He went in and said straight out, ‘There is no God.’ To which the great Bishop lifted up his finger and answered, ‘The fool has said in his heart there is no God.’ And he fell down at his feet on the spot. ‘I believe,’ he cried, ‘and will be christened.’ And so he was. Princess Dashkov was his godmother, and Potyomkin his godfather.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Les frères Karamazov 1906 [Leather Bound]

“Alas, put no faith in such a bond of union. Interpreting freedom as the multiplication and rapid satisfaction of desires, men distort their own nature, for many senseless and foolish desires and
habits and ridiculous fancies are fostered in them. They live only for mutual envy, for luxury and ostentation. To have dinners, visits, carriages, rank and slaves to wait on one is looked upon as
a necessity, for which life, honor and human feeling are sacrificed, and men even commit suicide if they are unable to satisfy it. We see the same thing among those who are not rich, while the poor
drown their unsatisfied need and their envy in drunkenness. But soon they will drink blood instead of wine, they are being led on to it. I ask you is such a man free? I knew one "champion of freedom"
who told me himself that, when he was deprived of tobacco in prison, he was so wretched at the privation that he almost went and betrayed his cause for the sake of getting tobacco again! And
such a man says, "I am fighting for the cause of humanity."
How can such a one fight? what is he fit for? He is capable perhaps of some action quickly over, but he cannot hold out long. And it's no wonder that instead of gaining freedom they have sunk into slavery, and instead of serving the cause of brotherly love and the union of humanity have fallen, on the contrary, into dissension and isolation, as my mysterious visitor and teacher said to me in my
youth. And therefore the idea of the service of humanity, of brotherly love and the solidarity of mankind, is more and more dying out in the world, and indeed this idea is sometimes treated with
derision. For how can a man shake off his habits? what can become of him if he is in such bondage to the habit of satisfying the innumerable desires he has created for himself? He is isolated, and what
concern has he with the rest of humanity? They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown less.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov