The Brothers Karamazov
Reading The Brothers Karamazov took me a whole month. Dostoevsky had been one of my favorites for his emphasis on psychological character development, and this work is the most ambitious of his works as it tries to develop half a dozen characters at once. The story focuses on the Karamazov family, which includes the father, Fyodor, and his three sons, Dmitri, Ivan, and Alyosha. The plot is inherently dramatic because of these characters’ clashing temperaments: the father, Fyodor, is a wealthy hedonist; Dmitri is a spendthrift sensualist; Ivan is intelligent yet cold; and Alyosha is a budding monk. The main part of the plot is that Fyodor is killed as a result of a love triangle, though I found that the premise and the plot are comparatively not as interesting as the character interactions within. This novel is the most representative of Dostoevsky as a philosopher, and I especially loved the unsweetened way it presented the world.
The book is a commentary on dualities: each member of the Karamazov family “contemplated both abysses at once, the abyss of lofty ideals, and the abyss of the lowest and foulest degradation”. Out of these poles of idealism and depravity grew tension between characters that embody separate aspects of such poles: between worldly Ivan and naive Alyosha, between proud Katya and seductive Grushenka, and between sleazy Fyodor and saintly Elder Zosima. I once contemplated and wrote an essay about one specific duality, between freedom and comfort (which was central in Brave New World when I read that); the chapter “The Grand Inquisitor” is all about this debate, told by Ivan as a challenge to Alyosha, and it’s also one of the philosophical highlights of the book (that can be read on its own). In presenting all of these philosophical debates, embodied in the characters, the work is phenomenal in making cases and giving merit to each side and it’s what made these debates so provocative and the character interactions so gripping.
% grep -i "the brothers karamazov" quotes.txt15 matches
on love
“In certain cases, it is more honorable to yield to some passion, however unwise, if it springs from great love, than not to yield to it at all”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
on beauty
“What’s shame for the mind is beauty all over for the heart”
— (Dmitri Karamazov), Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
on groups
“Schoolchildren are merciless people: separately they’re God’s angels, but together, especially in school, they’re quite often merciless”
— (Fyodor Karamazov), Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
on wickedness
“Wickedness is sweet: everyone denounces it, but everyone lives in it, only they all do it on the sly and I do it openly”
— (Fyodor Karamazov), Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
on suffering
“I ask myself: ‘What is hell?’ And I answer thus: ‘The suffering of being no longer able to love’”
— (Zosima), Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
on honesty
“Stupidity is brief and guileless, while reason hedges and hides”
— (Ivan Karamazov), Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
on guilt
“Once I played a most shameless nasty trick on him, he never did anything to me; and the moment I did it, I immediately hated him for it”
— (Fyodor Karamazov), Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
on shame
“It’s terribly difficult for an offended man when everyone suddenly starts looking like his benefactor”
— (Alyosha Karamazov), Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
on shame
“There are people who feel deeply but are somehow beaten down. Their buffoonery is something like spiteful irony against those to whom they dare not speak the truth directly because of a long-standing, humiliating timidity before them”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
on evil
“If the devil does not exist, and man has therefore created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness”
— (Ivan Karamazov), Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
on evil
“People love crime, and love it always, not just at moments. It’s as if at some point they all agreed to lie about it, and have been lying about it ever since. They all say, they hate what’s bad, but secretly they all love it”
— (Lise), Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
on freedom
“There is nothing more seductive for man than the freedom of his conscience, but there is nothing more tormenting for him, either”
— (Grand Inquisitor), Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
on conformity
“There is for man no preoccupation more constant or more nagging than, while in a condition of freedom, quickly to find someone to bow down before”
— (Grand Inquisitor), Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
on independence
“Everyone strives to separate his person, wishing to experience the fullness of life within himself, and yet what comes of all his efforts is not the fullness of life but full suicide, for instead of the fullness of self-definition, they fall into complete isolation”
— (Zosima’s visitor), Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
on illusion of progress
“We are assured that the world is becoming more and more united, by the shortening of distances, by the transmitting of thoughts through the air. Alas, do not believe in such a union of people. Taking freedom to mean the increase and prompt satisfaction of needs, they distort their own nature, for they generate many meaningless and foolish desires, habits, and the most absurd fancies in themselves. They live for mutual envy, for pleasure-seeking and self-display”
— (Zosima), Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov