Jessica’s Reviews > Resurrection > Status Update

The fourth (Matt. 38-42), that man should not only not demand an eye for an eye, but when struck on one cheek should hold out the other, should forgive an offence and bear it humbly, and never refuse the service others demand of him.

The fifth (Matt. 43-48), that man should not only not hate his enemy and not fight him, but love him, help him, serve him.

paradoxical or to be only a joke, being confirmed more and more often by life's experience, suddenly appeared as the simplest, truest certainty....It became clear to him that all the dreadful evil he had been witnessing in prisons and jails and the quiet self-satisfaction of the perpetrators of this evil were the consequences of men trying to do what was impossible; trying to correct evil while being evil themselves.

Simonson was one of those people whose actions follow the dictates of their reason, and are determined by it. Novodvóroff belonged, on the contrary, to the class...whose reason is directed partly towards the attainment of aims set by their feelings, partly to the justification of acts suggested by their feelings.

in the depth of his soul the firm and quiet conviction inherited from his forefathers, and common to all labourers on the land, that just as in the world of plants and animals nothing ceases to exist, but continually changes its form, the manure into grain, the grain into a food, the tadpole into a frog, the caterpillar into a butterfly, the acorn into an oak, so man also does not perish, but only undergoes a change.

in his views on religion, never thinking about metaphysical questions, about the origin of all origin, or the future life. God was to him, an hypothesis, which he had had no need of up to now. He had no business with the origin of the world, whether Moses or Darwin was right…. how the world had originated did not interest him, just because the question how it would be best to live in this world was ever before him.

turned revolutionists because they honestly considered it their duty to fight the existing evils, but there were also those who chose this work for selfish, ambitious motives; the majority, however, was attracted to the revolutionary idea by the desire for danger, for risks, the enjoyment of playing with one's life, which…is quite common to the most ordinary people while they are young and full of energy.

When Nekhlúdoff came to know them better he became convinced that they were not the right-down villains that some imagined them to be, nor the complete heroes that others thought them, but ordinary people, just the same as others, among whom there were some good and some bad, and some mediocre, as there are everywhere.

Everybody lives and acts partly according to his own, partly according to other people's, ideas. This is what constitutes one of the great differences among men.

If one acknowledges but for a single hour that anything can be more important than love for one's fellowmen, even in some one exceptional case, any crime can be committed without a feeling of guilt.