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Elena's Reviews > The Brothers Karamazov

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
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it was amazing
bookshelves: favorites

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Quotes Elena Liked

Fyodor Dostoevsky
“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky
“The more stupid one is, the closer one is to reality. The more stupid one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence squirms and hides itself. Intelligence is unprincipled, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky
“And what's strange, what would be marvelous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea--he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Do you know I've been sitting here thinking to myself: that if I didn't believe in life, if I lost faith in the woman I love, lost faith in the order of things, were convinced in fact that everything is a disorderly, damnable, and perhaps devil-ridden chaos, if I were struck by every horror of man's disillusionment -- still I should want to live. Having once tasted of the cup, I would not turn away from it till I had drained it! At thirty though, I shall be sure to leave the cup even if I've not emptied it, and turn away -- where I don't know. But till I am thirty I know that my youth will triumph over everything -- every disillusionment, every disgust with life. I've asked myself many times whether there is in the world any despair that could overcome this frantic thirst for life. And I've come to the conclusion that there isn't, that is until I am thirty.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Two abysses, gentlemen of the jury, remember that Karamazov can contemplate two abysses, and both at the same time.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky
“All we Karamazovs are such insects. And angel as you are, that insect lives in you, too, and will stir up a tempest in your blood. Tempests, because sensual lust is a tempest - worse than a tempest! Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed, for God sets before us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side. I am not an educated nor cultured man, Alyosha, but I've thought a lot about this. It's terrible what mysteries there are! Too many riddles weigh men down on earth. We must solve as we can, and try to keep a dry skin in the water. Beauty! I can't bear the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom. What's still more awful is that a man with the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal of the Madonna, and his heart may be on fire with that ideal, genuinely on fire, just as in his days of youth and innocence. Yes, man is broad, too broad. I'd have him narrower. The devil only knows what to make of it! What to the mind is shameful is beauty and nothing else to the heart. Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in Sodom. Did you know that secret? The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in Sodom. Did you know that secret? The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov


Reading Progress

May 3, 2016 – Started Reading
May 3, 2016 – Shelved
May 18, 2016 –
page 340
42.71% "The "classic" status of a work such as this is distracting. It compels you to approach it with a ten-foot-pole, as it were. This defeats the entire purpose of the work, which is to rack our insides, make it a bit clearer where we really stand on the big questions. For me, the parts to which I found myself unresponsive - which fell on dull ears - have already taught me a great deal about my inner limitations."
May 20, 2016 –
page 508
63.82%
May 20, 2016 –
page 508
63.82% "Mitya's dream - that the seeds for redemption can be found in dreams."
May 22, 2016 –
page 650
81.66% "Ivan, the post-Enlightenment, borderline Nietzschean rationalist, converses with the Devil. Dostoyevsky proves to be a penetrating cartographer of evil. He has much to build on Milton, for instance."
May 25, 2016 –
page 702
88.19% "LMFAO, the scene with the doctors giving expert evidence in court! "Experts" have not changed one bit since Dostoyevsky's day!"
May 27, 2016 – Shelved as: favorites
May 27, 2016 – Finished Reading

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