A new social system

I shall now invent an entire social system and you will not believe how easy it is! All you have to do is isolate yourself off in a corner or even end up inside a crocodile, close your eyes and immediately you will invent an entire paradise for all of mankind. … True, at first [...]

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Christmas with the convicts

At last the holidays arrived. On Christmas Eve very few convicts went out to work. A few went to the sewing sheds and the workshops; the rest of the men merely attended the work detail, and although they were assigned to various locations, almost all of them, either singly or in groups, went straight back [...]

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Seeking salvation

But if you were to see how proud is that mighty spirit which created this colossal embellishment and how proudly convinced this spirit is of its victory and its triumph, then you would shudder for those over whom this proud spirit hovers and rules. In the presence of such enormity, in the presence of such [...]

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The consolation of progress

Yes, sir, now we have been completely consoled; we have consoled ourselves. So what if not everything around us now is still not very beautiful; we ourselves are so wonderful, so civilized, so European that even the people are ready to vomit from looking at us. The people now regard us as complete foreigners; they [...]

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Paris…or the modern world

I have formed a definition of Paris, attached an epithet to it, and I stand by that epithet. Namely: this is the most moral and most virtuous city in the whole world. What order! What prudence, what well defined and solidly established relationships; how secure and sharply delineated everything is; how content everyone is; how [...]

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Fit to size

‘The Frenchman has no common sense and would indeed consider it the greatest misfortune to have it.’ Fonvizin wrote this sentence in the last century [18th], and, my God, what pleasure he must have taken in writing it! I bet his heart was tickled with delight when he composed it. And, who knows, perhaps all [...]

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The ascent of the flesh

The most shocking thing about him for me was his spiritual indifference. The flesh had gained such an ascendancy over all his mental qualities that one glance at his face was enough to tell you that all that was left in him was a savage desire for physical pleasure, for sexual passion and carnal satisfaction.Fyodor [...]

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But one rung

The absolute atheist stands on the last rung but one before most absolute faith (whether he steps higher or not), while an indifferent man has no faith at all, nothing but dismal fear, and that, too, only occasionally, if he is a sensitive man.Fr. Tikhon in Devils by FD

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The truth…

stands higher than your pain.Fyodor Dostoevsky

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Responsibility

In making the individual responsible, Christianity thereby acknowledges his freedom. In making the individual dependent on every flaw in the social structure, however, the doctrine of the environment reduces him to an absolute nonentity, exempts him totally from every personal moral duty and from all independence, reduces him to the lowest form of slavery imaginable.Fyodor [...]

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Speaking of Dostoevsky

It is culture we have not got… and it is not there because of the nihilist, Peter the Great.Dostoevsky Now let us think…Peter the Great-the “great” Westernizer-and an association with nihilism…maybe there is something about the West and nihilism? I am thinking yes.

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An itty bitty spider…

I always imagined that you would take me to some place where there was a huge, wicked spider as big as a man, and we should spend the rest of our lives looking at it and being afraid of it. Lisa in The Possessed So does anyone remember that movie Arachnophobia? I always thought it [...]

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Frenchiness

“You don’t believe in the devil? Disbelief in the devil is a French notion, a frivolous notion.” Lebedev in The Idiot

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человека-бога

Then there will be a new life, a new man, everything will be new. Then history will be divided into two parts: from the gorilla to the annihilation of God, and from the annihilation of God…to the physical transformation of the earth and man. Man will be god. Kirillov in The Possessed

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