Andrew’s Reviews > The Brothers Karamazov > Status Update

“Listen, Alyosha, don’t laugh, this is terribly important: is it possible for two different people to have one and the same dream?”
“It must be.”
- Liza Khokhlakov and Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov

“In fact you’re not like everyone else: you weren’t ashamed just now to confess bad and even ridiculous things about yourself. Who would confess such things nowadays? No one, and people have even stopped feeling any need for self-judgment. Do not be like everyone else; even if you are the only one left who is not like that, still do not be like that.”
- Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov to Kolya Krasotkin

“And what does it mean—ridiculous? What does it matter how many times a man is or seems to be ridiculous? Besides, nowadays almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.”
- Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov

“And I am with you, too, I won’t leave you now, I will go with you for the rest of my life,” the dear, deeply felt words of Grushenka came from somewhere near him. And his whole heart blazed up and turned towards some sort of light, and he wanted to live and live, to go on and on along some path, towards the new, beckoning light, and to hurry, hurry, right now, at once!

In certain cases, really, it is more honorable to yield to some passion, however unwise, if it springs from great love, than not to yield to it at all.

“Look at the divine gifts around us: the clear sky, the fresh air, the tender grass, the birds, nature is beautiful and sinless, and we, we alone, are godless and foolish, and do not understand that life is paradise, for we need only wish to understand, and it will come at once in all its beauty, and we shall embrace each other and weep…”
- Zosima

“Truly each of us is guilty before everyone and for everyone, only people do not know it, and if they knew it, the world would at once become paradise.”
- Markel

“Do not weep, life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we do not want to know it, and if we did want to know it, tomorrow there would be paradise the world over.”
- Markel

“I think that if the devil does not exist, and man has therefore created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.”
“As well as God, then.”
- Ivan and Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov

“If I did not believe in life, if I were to lose faith in the woman I love, if I were to lose faith in the order of things, even if I were to become convinced…that everything is a disorderly, damned, and perhaps devilish chaos…still I would want to live, and as long as I have bent to this cup, I will not tear myself from it until I’ve drunk it all!”
- Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov