Best Of Fyodor Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov"

Here is a selection of memorable quotes from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Painting above: "The Bewitched Man" c. 1798 by Francisco de Goya Y Lucientes

I erred, but I loved the good. 

Every moment I longed to reform,
 yet I lived like a wild beast.

p.750 

It is not miracles that bring a realist to faith. 

A true realist, if he is not a believer, 

will always find in himself the strength and ability not to believe in miracles as well, 

and if a miracle stands before him as an irrefutable fact, 

he will sooner doubt his own senses than admit the fact. 

And even if he does admit it, 

he will admit it as a fact of nature that was previously unknown to him. 

In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith. 

Once the realist comes to believe, then, precisely because of his realism, 

he must also allow for miracles.

p.25-26

Stupidity is brief and guileless, while reason hedges and hides. 

Reason is a scoundrel, stupidity is direct and honest.

p.236

In a word, something disorderly and absurd began, 

but Mitya was in his natural element, as it were, 

and the more absurd it all became, the more his spirits rose.

p.432

“Ah, I want disorder. I keep wanting to set fire to the house. 

I imagine how I’ll sneak up and set fire to it on the sly, 

it must be on the sly. 

They’ll try to put it out, but it will go on burning. 

And I’ll know and say nothing. 

Ah, what foolishness! And so boring!”

p. 581

Because I’m a Karamazov. 

Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, 

head down and heels up, 

and I’m even pleased that I’m falling in just such a humiliating position, 

and for me I find it beautiful. 

And so in that very shame I suddenly begin a hymn. 

Let me be cursed, let me be base and view, 

but let me also kiss the hem that garment in which my God is clothed; 

let me be following the devil at the same time, 

but still I am also your son, Lord, and I love you, 

and I feel a joy without which the world cannot stand and be.

p.107

A loving humility is a terrible power, the most powerful of all, 

nothing compares with it.

Keep company with yourself and look to yourself, 

every day and hour, every minute, that your image be ever gracious […] 

Brother, love is a teacher, but one must know how to acquire it, 

for it is difficult to acquire,

 it is dearly bought, by long work over a long time.

p.319

Fathers and teachers, I ask myself: “What is hell?” 

And I answer thus: “The suffering of being no longer able to love.”

p.322 

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