ren’s Reviews > The Brothers Karamazov > Status Update

"Love young children, especially. For they are also sinless as angels, and live in order to affect us with tender emotion, to purify our hearts, and as a certain indication to us."

"Love the animals. God has given them the basis of thought and an untroubled joy so do not disturb it, do not torment them, do not take away their joy, do not put yourself in opposition to God's intent; man exalt not yourself above the animals, they are sinless, and you, in your grandeur, fester the earth with your appearance on it and leave your festering footprints after you."

"Among the poor, envy and the frustration of needs are at present, dulled by drunkenness. But soon, in place of alcohol, it will be blood, upon which they grow intoxicated."

"It is true that there are, in the monkhood, also many parasites, lovers of the flesh, voluptuaries and brazen vagabonds; worldly men of progressive education, point to this: you are, they say, idlers, and useless members of society. Shameless beggars, you live upon the efforts of others."

"Dear mother, beloved droplet of my blood, in truth, each of us is guilty before the others for everyone, only people don't realize it."

"This strange little observation flashed, like an arrow, through Alyosha's sad mind, sad and sorrowful, at that moment."

"There's nothing more seductive for man than the freedom of his subconscious, there's nothing more tormenting for him either."

"For the sake of a universal bowing down, they've destroyed one another with the sword. They created gods and challenged one another: give up your gods and come worship ours, or else death to you and to your gods, and so it will be until the world's end, when even gods will vanish from the world."

"Ah, you mean the only sinless one, and his blood? No, I haven't forgotten about him. I have, on the contrary, been amazed at how long it has taken you to introduce him into the argument. For your kind usually wheel him out right at the start."

"And so I decline the offer of eternal harmony altogether. It is not worth one single small tear of even one tortured little child that beat its breast with its little fists, and prayed in its foul-smelling dog-hole with its unredeemed tears addressed to dear Father God."