1
" Once upon a time there was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire. So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God; 'She once pulled up an onion in her garden,' said he, 'and gave it to a beggar woman.' And God answered: 'You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.' The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. 'Come,' said he, 'catch hold and I'll pull you out.' he began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her. But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. 'I'm to be pulled out, not you. It's my onion, not yours.' As soon as she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away. "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler, The Devils, The Adolescent & more
2
" I dream of seeing, and seem to see clearly already, our future. It will come to pass that even the most corrupt of our rich will end by being ashamed of his riches before the poor, and the poor, seeing his humility, will understand and give way before him, will respond joyfully and kindly to his honourable shame. "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler, The Devils, The Adolescent & more
3
" This soldier had been taken prisoner in some remote part of Asia, and was threatened with an immediate agonising death if he did not renounce Christianity and follow Islam. He refused to deny his faith, and was tortured, flayed alive, and died, praising and glorifying Christ. "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler, The Devils, The Adolescent & more
4
" He was only speaking from confused memory of old slanders. But as soon as he had uttered his foolish tirade, he felt he had been talking absurd nonsense, and at once longed to prove to his audience, and above all to himself, that he had not been talking nonsense. And, though he knew perfectly well that with each word he would be adding more and more absurdity, he could not restrain himself, and plunged forward blindly. "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler, The Devils, The Adolescent & more
6
" 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, honour and human feeling are sacrificed, and men even commit suicide if they are unable to satisfy it. "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler, The Devils, The Adolescent & more
7
" That's what he says, he, and he knows it. 'You are going to perform an act of heroic virtue, and you don't believe in virtue; that's what tortures you and makes you angry, that's why you are so vindictive.' He said that to me about me and he knows what he says. "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler, The Devils, The Adolescent & more
8
" At some thoughts one stands perplexed, especially at the sight of men's sin, and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that once for all, you may subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvellously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it. "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler, The Devils, The Adolescent & more
10
" I did have an idea of beginning a new life with that money in Moscow or, better still, abroad. I did dream of it, chiefly because 'all things are lawful.' That was quite right what you taught me, for you talked a lot to me about that. For if there's no everlasting God, there's no such thing as virtue, and there's no need of it. You were right there. So that's how I looked at it. "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler, The Devils, The Adolescent & more
12
" This is my happiest day. I am going to the Lord.' 'Yes,' cry the pastors and the judges and philanthropic ladies. 'This is the happiest day of your life, for you are going to the Lord!' They all walk or drive to the scaffold in procession behind the prison van. At the scaffold they call to Richard: 'Die, brother, die in the Lord, for even thou hast found grace!' And so, covered with his brothers' kisses, Richard is dragged on to the scaffold, and led to the guillotine. And they chopped off his head in brotherly fashion, because he had found grace. "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler, The Devils, The Adolescent & more
13
" Oh, I've nothing against God. Of course, God is only a hypothesis, but... I admit that He is needed... for the order of the universe and all that... and that if there were no God He would have to be invented," added Kolya, beginning to blush. "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler, The Devils, The Adolescent & more
14
" yet to the very end he persisted in hoping that he would get that three thousand, that the money would somehow come to him of itself, as though it might drop from heaven. That is just how it is with people who, like Dmitri, have never had anything to do with money, except to squander what has come to them by inheritance without any effort of their own, and have no notion how money is obtained. "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler, The Devils, The Adolescent & more
15
" Not long ago I read the criticism made by a German who had lived in Russia, on our students and schoolboys of to-day. 'Show a Russian schoolboy,' he writes, 'a map of the stars, which he knows nothing about, and he will give you back the map next day with corrections on it.' No knowledge and unbounded conceit- that's what the German meant to say about the Russian schoolboy. "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler, The Devils, The Adolescent & more
16
" It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact. Even if he admits it, he admits it as a fact of nature till then unrecognised by him. Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith. If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also. "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler, The Devils, The Adolescent & more
17
" People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us. "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler, The Devils, The Adolescent & more
19
" In the sphere of actual life, which has, indeed, its own rights, but also lays upon us great duties and obligations, in that sphere, if we want to be humane- Christian, in fact- we must, or ought to, act only upon convictions justified by reason and experience, which have been passed through the crucible of analysis; in a word, we must act rationally, and not as though in dream and delirium, that we may not do harm, that we may not ill-treat and ruin a man. Then it will be real Christian work, not only mystic, but rational and philanthropic.... "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler, The Devils, The Adolescent & more
20
" I am sorry, friends and brothers, that I cannot express this clearly. But woe to those who have slain themselves on earth, woe to the suicides! I believe that there can be none more miserable than they. They tell us that it is a sin to pray for them and outwardly the Church, as it were, renounces them, but in my secret heart I believe that we may pray even for them. "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler, The Devils, The Adolescent & more
