" [Dostoevsky] soon began to notice that the life of freedom came more and more to resemble the life in the convict settlement, and that “the vast dome of the sky” which had seemed to him limitless when he was in prison now began to crush and to press on him as much as the barrack vaults had used to do; that the ideals which had sustained his fainting soul when he lived amongst the lowest dregs of humanity and shared their fate had not made a better man of him, nor liberated him, but on the contrary weighed him down and humiliated him as grievously as the chains of his prison. . . . Dostoevsky suddenly “saw” that the sky and the prison walls, ideals and chains are not contradictory to one another, as he had wished and thought formerly, when he still wished and thought like normal men. "
― Lev Shestov , In Job's Balances: A collection of essays by Lev Shestov
![Lev Shestov quote : [Dostoevsky] soon began to notice that the life of freedom came more and more to resemble the life in the convict settlement, and that “the vast dome of the sky” which had seemed to him limitless when he was in prison now began to crush and to press on him as much as the barrack vaults had used to do; that the ideals which had sustained his fainting soul when he lived amongst the lowest dregs of humanity and shared their fate had not made a better man of him, nor liberated him, but on the contrary weighed him down and humiliated him as grievously as the chains of his prison. . . . Dostoevsky suddenly “saw” that the sky and the prison walls, ideals and chains are not contradictory to one another, as he had wished and thought formerly, when he still wished and thought like normal men.](/image/2051556.jpg)