Demons quotes

… only learned the other day to my intense amazement, though on the most unimpeachable authority, that Stepan Trofimovitch had lived among us in our province not as an “exile” as we were accustomed to believe, and had never even been under police supervision at all.

Such is the force of imagination!

All his life he sincerely believed that in certain spheres he was a constant cause of apprehension, that every step he took was watched and noted, and that each one of the three governors who succeeded one another during twenty years in our province came …

… watched and noted, and that each one of the three governors who succeeded one another during twenty years in our province came with special and uneasy ideas concerning him, which had, by higher powers, been impressed upon each before everything else, on receiving the appointment.

Had anyone assured the honest man on the most irrefutable grounds that he had nothing to be afraid of, he would certainly have been offended.

Yet Stepan Trofimovitch was a most intelligent and gifted man, even, so to say, a man of science, though indeed, in science … well, in fact he had not done such great things in science. I believe indeed he had done nothing at all.

Yet Stepan Trofimovitch was a most intelligent and gifted man, even, so to say, a man of science, though indeed, in science … well, in fact he had not done such great things in science.

I believe indeed he had done nothing at all. But that’s very often the case, of course, with men of science among us in Russia.

He came back from abroad and was brilliant in the capacity of lecturer at the university, towards the end of the forties. He only had time to deliver a few lectures, I believe they were about the Arabs;

I don’t know whether the story is true, but it was asserted that at the same time there was discovered in Petersburg a vast, unnatural, and illegal conspiracy of thirty people which almost shook society to its foundations.

It was said that they were positively on the point of translating Fourier.

As though of design a poem of Stepan Trofimovitch’s was seized in Moscow at that very time, though it had been written six years before in Berlin in his earliest youth, and manuscript copies had been passed round a circle consisting of two poetical amateurs …

But, to do him justice, the “incarnation of reproach” was preserved even in the recumbent attitude, the more so as that was quite sufficient for the province. You should have seen him at our club when he sat down to cards.

His whole figure seemed to exclaim “Cards! Me sit down to whist with you! Is it consistent? Who is responsible for it? Who has shattered my energies and turned them to whist? Ah, perish, Russia!” and he would majestically trump with a heart.

And to tell the truth he dearly loved a game of cards, which led him, especially in later years, into frequent and unpleasant skirmishes with Varvara Petrovna, particularly as he was always losing. But of that later.

There are strange friendships.

The two friends are always ready to fly at one another, and go on like that all their lives, and yet they cannot separate.

Parting, in fact, is utterly impossible. The one who has begun the quarrel and separated will be the first to fall ill and even die, perhaps, if the separation comes off.

By degrees she broke him in so completely that at last he did not himself dare to allude to what had happened the day before, and only glanced into her eyes at times.

But she never forgot anything, while he sometimes forgot too quickly, and encouraged by her composure he would not infrequently, if friends came in, laugh and make jokes over the champagne the very same day.

With what malignancy she must have looked at him at such moments, while he noticed nothing!

She would not let a speck of dust fall upon him, coddled him up for twenty-two years, would not have slept for nights together if there were the faintest breath against his reputation as a poet, a learned man, and a public character.

She had invented him, and had been the first to believe in her own invention.

He was, after a fashion, her daydream. … But in return she exacted a great deal from him, sometimes even slavishness. It was incredible how long she harboured resentment. I have two anecdotes to tell about that.

He could not hold out for four months, and was soon flying back to Skvoreshniki. His last letters consisted of nothing but outpourings of the most sentimental love for his absent friend, and were literally wet with tears.

There are natures extremely attached to home like lapdogs.

The meeting of the friends was enthusiastic. Within two days everything was as before and even duller than before. “My friend,” Stepan Trofimovitch said to me a fortnight after, in dead secret, “I have discovered something awful for me … something new:

And yet we did nothing but indulge in the most harmless, agreeable, typically Russian, lighthearted liberal chatter.

“The higher liberalism” and the “higher liberal,” that is, a liberal without any definite aim, is only possible in Russia.

Stepan Trofimovitch, like every witty man, needed a listener, and, besides that, he needed the consciousness that he was fulfilling the lofty duty of disseminating ideas.

“We have made them the fashion, and a whole section of writers have for several years treated them as though they were newly discovered curiosities.

We have put laurel-wreaths on lousy heads.

The Russian village has given us only ‘Kamarinsky’ in a thousand years. A remarkable Russian poet who was also something of a wit, seeing the great Rachel on the stage for the first time cried in ecstasy, ‘I wouldn’t exchange Rachel for a peasant!’

Nationalism, if you like, has never existed among us except as a distraction for gentlemen’s clubs, and Moscow ones at that. I’m not talking of the days of Igor, of course. And besides it all comes of idleness.

Everything in Russia comes of idleness, everything good and fine even.

It all springs from the charming, cultured, whimsical idleness of our gentry! I’m ready to repeat it for thirty thousand years. We don’t know how to live by our own labour.

You’ve not only overlooked the people, you’ve taken up an attitude of disgusting contempt for them, if only because you could not imagine any but the French people, the Parisians indeed, and were ashamed that the Russians were not like them. That’s the naked truth.

And he who has no people has no God.

You may be sure that all who cease to understand their own people and lose their connection with them at once lose to the same extent the faith of their fathers, and become atheistic or indifferent. I’m speaking the truth!

He made his appearance in society, and with unfailing propriety performed all the duties demanded by our provincial etiquette. He was related, on his father’s side, to the governor, and was received by the latter as a near kinsman.

But a few months passed and the wild beast showed his claws.

I may observe by the way, in parenthesis, that Ivan Ossipovitch, our dear mild governor, was rather like an old woman, though he was of good family and highly connected—which explains the fact that he remained so long among us, though he steadily avoided all …

All our ladies were wild over the new visitor. They were sharply divided into two parties, one of which adored him while the other half regarded him with a hatred that was almost bloodthirsty: but both were crazy about him.

Some of them were particularly fascinated by the idea that he had perhaps a fateful secret hidden in his soul; others were positively delighted at the fact that he was a murderer.

It appeared too that he had had a very good education and was indeed a man of considerable culture. No great acquirements were needed, of course, to astonish us.

The old man suddenly felt that, instead of telling him some interesting secret, Nikolay had seized the upper part of his ear between his teeth and was nipping it rather hard. He shuddered, and breath failed him.

“Nicolas, this is beyond a joke!”

he moaned mechanically in a voice not his own.

“Nicolas! Nicolas!” his victim moaned again, “come … you’ve had your joke, that’s enough!”

In another moment the poor governor would certainly have died of terror; but the monster had mercy on him, and let go his ear.

The old man’s deadly terror lasted for a full minute, and it was followed by a sort of fit.

“Without being a Bismarck I’m equal to falseness and stupidity wherever I meet it, falseness, and Praskovya’s folly. I don’t know when I’ve met such a flabby woman, and what’s more her legs are swollen, and she’s a good-natured simpleton, too.

What can be more foolish than a good-natured simpleton?

”

“

That you and I are not the wisest people in the world, but that there are people wiser than we are.

”

She reproaches me for not writing anything. Strange idea! … She asks why I lie down? She says I ought to stand, ‘an example and reproach.’

Mais, entre nous soit dit, what is a man to do who is destined to stand as a ‘reproach,’ if not to lie down?

Does she understand that?”

Remember, too, that he’s a poet. Listen, Dasha, there’s no greater happiness than self-sacrifice. And besides, you’ll be giving me great satisfaction and that’s the chief thing. Don’t think I’ve been talking nonsense. I understand what I’m saying.

I’m an egoist, you be an egoist, too.

Of course I’m not forcing you. It’s entirely for you to decide. As you say, so it shall be. Well, what’s the good of sitting like this. Speak!”

He’ll want to hang himself and threaten, to—don’t you believe it. It’s nothing but nonsense. Don’t believe it; but still keep a sharp lookout, you never can tell, and one day he may hang himself. It does happen with people like that.

It’s not through strength of will but through weakness that people hang themselves, and so never drive him to an extreme, that’s the first rule in married life.

Remember, too, that he’s a poet. Listen, Dasha, there’s no greater happiness than self-sacrifice. And besides, you’ll be giving me great satisfaction and that’s the chief thing. Don’t think I’ve been talking nonsense. I understand what I’m saying.

“

What do your fifty-three years matter! Fifty is the middle of life, not the end of it.

You are a handsome man and you know it yourself. You know, too, what a respect she has for you. If I die, what will become of her? But married to you she’ll be at peace, and I shall be at peace.

At every moment he knew the very latest gossip and all the trifling incidents of our town, especially the unpleasant ones, and it was surprising to me how he took things to heart that were sometimes absolutely no concern of his.

It always seemed to me that the leading feature of his character was envy.

When I told Stepan Trofimovitch the same evening of my meeting Liputin that morning and our conversation, the latter to my amazement became greatly agitated, and asked me the wild question: “Does Liputin know or not?”

Mais cela passera. I’m only puzzled at one thing: you want to build our bridge and at the same time you declare that you hold with the principle of universal destruction.

They won’t let you build our bridge.

”

“

Mysteries, secrets! Where have all these mysteries and secrets among us sprung from?

” Stepan Trofimovitch could not refrain from exclaiming.

And do you remember how you told me the story of Prince Hamlet? And do you remember how you described to me how the poor emigrants were transported from Europe to America? And it was all untrue; I found out afterwards how they were transited.

But what beautiful fibs he used to tell me then, Mavriky Nikolaevitch! They were better than the truth.

Why do you look at Mavriky Nikolaevitch like that? He is the best and finest man on the face of the globe and you must like him just as you do me! Il fait tout ce que je veux.

She sat down on the sofa again. “One life is over and another is begun, then that one is over—a third begins, and so on, endlessly.

All the ends are snipped off as it were with scissors.

See what stale things I’m telling you. Yet how much truth there is in them!”

“He does not exist, but He is. In the stone there is no pain, but in the fear of the stone is the pain.

God is the pain of the fear of death.

He who will conquer pain and terror will become himself a god. Then there will be a new life, a new man; everything will be new … then they will divide history into two parts:

“He does not exist, but He is.

In the stone there is no pain, but in the fear of the stone is the pain.

God is the pain of the fear of death. He who will conquer pain and terror will become himself a god. Then there will be a new life, a new man; everything will be new … then they will divide history into two parts:

“That’s no matter. They will kill deception. Everyone who wants the supreme freedom must dare to kill himself.

He who dares to kill himself has found out the secret of the deception.

There is no freedom beyond; that is all, and there is nothing beyond. He who dares kill himself is God. Now everyone can do so that there shall be no God and shall be nothing. But no one has once done it yet.”

“That’s no matter. They will kill deception. Everyone who wants the supreme freedom must dare to kill himself. He who dares to kill himself has found out the secret of the deception. There is no freedom beyond; that is all, and there is nothing beyond.

He who dares kill himself is God.

Now everyone can do so that there shall be no God and shall be nothing. But no one has once done it yet.”

he smiled with some surprise. “Why? No, I … I don’t know.” He was suddenly confused. “I know not how it is with the others, and I feel that I cannot do as others. Everybody thinks and then at once thinks of something else.

I can’t think of something else. I think all my life of one thing.

God has tormented me all my life,” he ended up suddenly with astonishing expansiveness.

But now … Oh, now I’m thinking of that generous, humane woman, so long-suffering with my contemptible failings—not that she’s been altogether long-suffering, but what have I been with my horrid, worthless character!

I’m a capricious child, with all the egoism of a child and none of the innocence.

For the last twenty years she’s been looking after me like a nurse, cette pauvre auntie, as Lise so charmingly calls her.

Children will come, probably not my own either—certainly not my own: a wise man is not afraid to face the truth. Liputin proposed this morning putting up barricades to keep out Nicolas; Liputin’s a fool.

A woman would deceive the all-seeing eye itself.

Le bon Dieu knew what He was in for when He was creating woman, but I’m sure that she meddled in it herself and forced Him to create her such as she is … and with such attributes:

I would gladly borrow from him his phrase. Well, here I am ready to conquer myself, and I’m getting married. And what am I conquering by way of the whole world?

Oh, my friend, marriage is the moral death of every proud soul, of all independence.

Married life will corrupt me, it will sap my energy, my courage in the service of the cause. Children will come, probably not my own either—certainly not my own: a wise man is not afraid to face the truth.

“

The idea’s no trouble, you know, it’s the plan is the trouble,

” Liza smiled. “I understand very little. I am not very clever, and I only pursue what is clear to me, myself. …”

“

Russian atheism has never gone further than making a joke,

” growled Shatov, putting up a new candle in place of an end that had burnt out.

“

Men made of paper! It all comes from flunkeyism of thought,

” Shatov observed calmly, sitting down on a chair in the corner, and pressing the palms of both hands on his knees.

“There’s hatred in it, too,” he went on, after a minute’s pause. “They’d be the first to be terribly unhappy if Russia could be suddenly reformed, even to suit their own ideas, and became extraordinarily prosperous and happy.

They’d have no one to hate then, no one to curse, nothing to find fault with.

There is nothing in it but an immense animal hatred for Russia which has eaten into their organism. … And it isn’t a case of tears unseen by the world under cover of a smile!

“You need not apologise. I’m not afraid of you. Once I was only the son of a flunkey, but now I’ve become a flunkey myself, like you.

Our Russian liberal is a flunkey before everything, and is only looking for someone whose boots he can clean.

”

“Do you know what, Shatushka?” She shook her head. “You may be a very sensible man but you’re dull. It’s strange for me to look at all of you. I don’t understand how it is people are dull.

Sadness is not dullness. I’m happy.

”

“It always comes out the same, a journey, a wicked man, somebody’s treachery, a deathbed, a letter, unexpected news. I think it’s all nonsense. Shatushka, what do you think?

If people can tell lies why shouldn’t a card?

” She suddenly threw the cards together again. “I said the same thing to Mother Praskovya, she’s a very venerable woman, she used to run to my cell to tell her fortune on the cards, without letting the Mother Superior know.

I kiss it and weep. And let me tell you, Shatushka, there’s no harm in those tears; and even if one has no grief, one’s tears flow from joy.

The tears flow of themselves, that’s the truth.

I used to go out to the shores of the lake; on one side was our convent and on the other the pointed mountain, they called it the Peak.

“There, you see.

Everyone has something of their own,

” Shatov said, still more softly, his head drooping lower and lower.

This was evident from the very expression of her face. Evidently too, Varvara Petrovna was always possessed by a demon of haughty pride whenever she had the least ground for suspecting that she was for some reason supposed to be humiliated.

Like many weak people, who for a long time allow themselves to be insulted without resenting it, Praskovya Ivanovna showed an extraordinary violence in her attack at the first favourable opportunity.

It is true that she was not well, and always became more irritable in illness.

But what was most striking about him was the fact that he appeared now wearing a dress-coat and clean linen.

“There are people on whom clean linen is almost unseemly,”

as Liputin had once said when Stepan Trofimovitch reproached him in jest for being untidy.

Why is that? I am a poet, madam, a poet in soul, and might be getting a thousand roubles at a time from a publisher, yet I am forced to live in a pig pail. Why? Why, madam?

To my mind Russia is a freak of nature and nothing else.

”

At the first glance he looked round-shouldered and awkward, but yet he was not round-shouldered, and his manner was easy. He seemed a queer fish, and yet later on we all thought his manners good, and his conversation always to the point.

No one would have said that he was ugly, and yet no one would have liked his face.

His head was elongated at the back, and looked flattened at the sides, so that his face seemed pointed, his forehead was high and narrow, but his features were small;

He walked and moved very hurriedly, yet never seemed in a hurry to be off. It seemed as though nothing could disconcert him; in every circumstance and in every sort of society he remained the same.

He had a great deal of conceit, but was utterly unaware of it himself.

He talked quickly, hurriedly, but at the same time with assurance, and was never at a loss for a word. In spite of his hurried manner his ideas were in perfect order, distinct and definite—and this was particularly striking. His articulation was wonderfully clear.

I’m only talking of that period, Varvara Petrovna; as for ‘eccentricity,’ that’s his own expression. He does not conceal much from me. Mlle. Lebyadkin, who was thrown in the way of meeting Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch very often, at one time, was fascinated by his appearance.

He was, so to say, a diamond set in the dirty background of her life.

I am a poor hand at describing feelings, so I’ll pass them over; but some of that dirty lot took to jeering at her once, and it made her sad. They always had laughed at her, but she did not seem to notice it before.

“Please excuse me,” she responded, speaking quickly. “You … you’ve seen Mavriky Nikolaevitch of course. …

My goodness, how inexcusably tall you are, Mavriky Nikolaevitch!

”

I saw Lizaveta Nikolaevna seize her mother by the shoulder and Mavriky Nikolaevitch by the arm and make two or three violent efforts to draw them out of the room. But she suddenly uttered a shriek, and fell full length on the floor, fainting.

I can hear the thud of her head on the carpet to this day.

but I put a different interpretation on it. In inviting a nihilist to see him, Mr. Karmazinov, no doubt, had in view his relations with the progressives of the younger generation in both capitals.

The great author trembled nervously before the revolutionary youth of Russia, and imagining, in his ignorance, that the future lay in their hands, fawned upon them in a despicable way, chiefly because they paid no attention to him whatever.

Pyotr Stepanovitch ran round to see his father twice, but unfortunately I was absent on both occasions. He visited him for the first time only on Wednesday, that is, not till the fourth day after their first meeting, and then only on business.

It would have been best to have done without anything, to have kept one’s own character, wouldn’t it?

There is no better dodge than one’s own character, because no one believes in it.

I meant, I must own, to assume the part of a fool, because it is easier to be a fool than to act one’s own character;

And why do I use so many words, and why do I never speak well? Because I don’t know how to speak.

People who can speak well, speak briefly.

So that I am stupid, am I not? But as this gift of stupidity is natural to me, why shouldn’t I make skilful use of it? And I do make use of it.

Maybe it’s true. One grizzled old stager of a captain sat mum, not saying a word. All at once he stands up in the middle of the room and says aloud, as though speaking to himself:

‘If there’s no God, how can I be a captain then?’

He took up his cap and went out, flinging up his hands.”

“You ‘felt the idea’?” observed Kirillov. “That’s good.

There are lots of ideas that are always there and yet suddenly become new.

That’s true. I see a great deal now as though it were for the first time.”

“What of it? Why connect it?

Life’s one thing and that’s another. Life exists, but death doesn’t at all.

”

“N‑no … why? I’m not speaking of an allegory, but of a leaf, only a leaf.

The leaf is good. Everything’s good.

”

“Everything.

Man is unhappy because he doesn’t know he’s happy. It’s only that.

That’s all, that’s all! If anyone finds out he’ll become happy at once, that minute. That mother-in-law will die; but the baby will remain. It’s all good. I discovered it all of a sudden.”

“

I pray to everything. You see the spider crawling on the wall, I look at it and thank it for crawling.

”

It’s a sign of the decay of nations when they begin to have gods in common. When gods begin to be common to several nations the gods are dying and the faith in them, together with the nations themselves.

The stronger a people the more individual their God.

There never has been a nation without a religion, that is, without an idea of good and evil. Every people has its own conception of good and evil, and its own good and evil.

“Your own nasty expression,” Shatov laughed spitefully, sitting down again. “

To cook your hare you must first catch it, to believe in God you must first have a god.

You used to say that in Petersburg, I’m told, like Nozdryov, who tried to catch a hare by his hind legs.”

“

You’re an atheist because you’re a snob, a snob of the snobs.

You’ve lost the distinction between good and evil because you’ve lost touch with your own people. A new generation is coming, straight from the heart of the people, and you will know nothing of it, neither you nor the Verhovenskys, father or son;

A new generation is coming, straight from the heart of the people, and you will know nothing of it, neither you nor the Verhovenskys, father or son; nor I, for I’m a snob too—I, the son of your serf and lackey, Pashka. … Listen.

Attain to God by work; it all lies in that; or disappear like rotten mildew.

Attain to Him by work.”

Last Friday I filled myself as full of pie as Martin did of soap; since then I didn’t eat one day, and the day after I fasted, and on the third I’d nothing again. I’ve had my fill of water from the river.

I’m breeding fish in my belly.

… So won’t your honour give me something? I’ve a sweetheart expecting me not far from here, but I daren’t show myself to her without money.”

“I see that you haven’t changed a bit in these four years and more, captain,” said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, somewhat more amiably. “

It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man’s life is usually made up of nothing but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.

”

You solve the riddle of life!” said the captain, half cunningly, half in genuine and unfeigned admiration, for he was a great lover of words. “Of all your sayings, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, I remember one thing above all; you were in Petersburg when you said it:

‘One must really be a great man to be able to make a stand even against common sense.’

That was it.”

That is, in case of accident. All her followers turn away, all her suitors are gone. A pretty kettle of fish. Only the poet remains faithful, with his heart shattered in his breast, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch.

Even a louse may be in love, and is not forbidden by law.

And yet the lady was offended by the letter and the verses. I’m told that even you were angry. Were you? I wouldn’t believe in anything so grievous. Whom could I harm simply by imagination?

“

Anyone is worthy of an umbrella.

”

“

I’m not troubling about you at all. I’m afraid that I may leave off loving somebody.

”

“And what are you that I should go with you? I’m to sit on a mountain beside him for forty years on end—a pretty story! And upon my word, how long-suffering people have become nowadays!

No, it cannot be that a falcon has become an owl.

My prince is not like that!” she said, raising her head proudly and triumphantly.

“Not in the least,” said Kirillov, turning round to shake hands with him. “

If my burden’s light it’s because it’s from nature; perhaps your burden’s heavier because that’s your nature.

There’s no need to be much ashamed; only a little.”

“It won’t be today, and it won’t be tomorrow. I can’t say about the day after tomorrow.

Perhaps we shall all be dead, and so much the better.

Leave me alone, leave me alone, do.”

“

Oh! a fine demon! It’s simply a little nasty, scrofulous imp, with a cold in his head, one of the unsuccessful ones.

But you have something you don’t dare to say again, Dasha?”

This was, so to say, his special role in local society. He drawled, too, and spoke with peculiar suavity, probably having picked up the habit from Russians travelling abroad, or from those wealthy landowners of former days who had suffered most from the emancipation.

Stepan Trofimovitch had observed that the more completely a landowner was ruined, the more suavely he lisped and drawled his words.

He did, as a fact, lisp and drawl himself, but was not aware of it in himself.

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch at once wrapped himself in the most austere silence, which, of course, gratified everyone much more than if he had talked till doomsday. In a word, he was a success, he was the fashion.

If once one has figured in provincial society, there’s no retreating into the background.

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch began to fulfil all his social duties in the province punctiliously as before. He was not found cheerful company: “a man who has seen suffering; a man not like other people; he has something to be melancholy about.”

“And why not? You’re a sensible man, and of course you don’t believe in it yourself, but you know perfectly well that you need religion to brutalise the people.

Truth is honester than falsehood.

…”

At once the suggestion was made that they should go and look at the suicide. The idea met with approval: our ladies had never seen a suicide. I remember one of them said aloud on the occasion,

“Everything’s so boring, one can’t be squeamish over one’s amusements, as long as they’re interesting.”

Only a few of them remained outside. The others went in a body into the dirty corridor, and amongst the others I saw, to my amazement, Lizaveta Nikolaevna.

Death must have been instantaneous. There was no trace of the anguish of death in the face; the expression was serene, almost happy, as though there were no cares in his life. All our party stared at him with greedy curiosity.

In every misfortune of one’s neighbour there is always something cheering for an onlooker⁠—whoever he may be.

Our ladies gazed in silence, their companions distinguished themselves by their wit and their superb equanimity. One observed that his was the best way out of it, and that the boy could not have hit upon anything more sensible;

“You’re awfully fond of these exclamations, Stepan Trofimovitch. It’s not at all the fashion. Nowadays people talk roughly but simply. You keep harping on our twenty years!

Twenty years of mutual vanity, and nothing more.

Every letter you’ve written me was written not for me but for posterity. You’re a stylist, and not a friend, and friendship is only a splendid word. In reality—a mutual exchange of sloppiness. …”

“You laugh ironically. And what used you to say to me about charity? Yet the enjoyment derived from charity is a haughty and immoral enjoyment. The rich man’s enjoyment in his wealth, his power, and in the comparison of his importance with the poor.

Charity corrupts giver and taker alike; and, what’s more, does not attain its object, as it only increases poverty.

Fathers who don’t want to work crowd round the charitable like gamblers round the gambling-table, hoping for gain, while the pitiful farthings that are flung them are a hundred times too little. Have you given away much in your life?

“

Your Karmazinov is a spiteful old woman whose day is over.

Chère, chère, how long have you been so enslaved by them? Oh God!”

he is simply lying with some object. But possibly he is not lying and is only genuinely stupid.

I like a genius to be rather stupid.

Mayn’t he be a sort of genius among them? Devil take the fellow!”

There won’t be stones to fall, everything will crumble into dirt.

Holy Russia has less power of resistance than anything in the world.

The Russian peasantry is still held together somehow by the Russian God; but according to the latest accounts the Russian God is not to be relied upon, and scarcely survived the emancipation; it certainly gave Him a severe shock.

I understand only too well why wealthy Russians all flock abroad, and more and more so every year. It’s simply instinct.

If the ship is sinking, the rats are the first to leave it.

Holy Russia is a country of wood, of poverty … and of danger, the country of ambitious beggars in its upper classes, while the immense majority live in poky little huts. She will be glad of any way of escape;

“

Nothing is more amusing sometimes than a surly dullard.

”

“Going? Couldn’t be better. It will amuse you: the first thing which has a tremendous effect is giving them titles.

Nothing has more influence than a title.

I invent ranks and duties on purpose; I have secretaries, secret spies, treasurers, presidents, registrars, their assistants—they like it awfully, it’s taken capitally. Then, the next force is sentimentalism, of course. You know, amongst us socialism spreads principally through sentimentalism.

sometimes you put your foot in it. Then come the out-and-out rogues; well, they are a good sort, if you like, and sometimes very useful; but they waste a lot of one’s time, they want incessant looking after.

And the most important force of all⁠—the cement that holds everything together⁠—is their being ashamed of having an opinion of their own.

That is a force! And whose work is it, whose precious achievement is it, that not one idea of their own is left in their heads! They think originality a disgrace.”

“An excellent saying! Golden words!” cried Stavrogin. “He’s hit the mark there!

The right to dishonour⁠—why, they’d all flock to us for that, not one would stay behind!

And listen, Verhovensky, you are not one of the higher police, are you?”

for even then I couldn’t be at peace as to whether there was a God or not. It used to fret me so! In the morning, of course, one would amuse oneself and one’s faith would seem to be lost again; and in fact

I’ve noticed that faith always seems to be less in the daytime.

”

(There was the sound of laughter.) “I must add, besides, that my system is not yet complete.” (Laughter again.) “I am perplexed by my own data and my conclusion is a direct contradiction of the original idea with which I start.

Starting from unlimited freedom, I arrive at unlimited despotism.

I will add, however, that there can be no solution of the social problem but mine.”

No one has a mind of his own nowadays. There are terribly few original minds nowadays. Virginsky is a pure-hearted man, ten times as pure as you or I; but never mind about him. Liputin is a rogue, but I know one point about him.

Every rogue has some point in him.

… Lyamshin is the only one who hasn’t, but he is in my hands. A few more groups, and I should have money and passports everywhere; so much at least. Suppose it were only that?

The great intellects have always seized the power and been despots. Great intellects cannot help being despots and they’ve always done more harm than good. They will be banished or put to death.

Cicero will have his tongue cut out, Copernicus will have his eyes put out, Shakespeare will be stoned⁠—that’s Shigalovism.

Slaves are bound to be equal. There has never been either freedom or equality without despotism, but in the herd there is bound to be equality, and that’s Shigalovism! Ha ha ha! Do you think it strange? I am for Shigalovism.”

Slaves must have directors. Absolute submission, absolute loss of individuality, but once in thirty years Shigalov would let them have a shock and they would all suddenly begin eating one another up, to a certain point, simply as a precaution against boredom.

Boredom is an aristocratic sensation.

The Shigalovians will have no desires. Desire and suffering are our lot, but Shigalovism is for the slaves.”

I am for Shigalov. Down with culture. We’ve had enough science! Without science we have material enough to go on for a thousand years, but one must have discipline. The one thing wanting in the world is discipline.

The thirst for culture is an aristocratic thirst.

The moment you have family ties or love you get the desire for property. We will destroy that desire; we’ll make use of drunkenness, slander, spying; we’ll make use of incredible corruption; we’ll stifle every genius in its infancy.

we’ll make use of incredible corruption; we’ll stifle every genius in its infancy. We’ll reduce all to a common denominator! Complete equality! ‘We’ve learned a trade, and we are honest men; we need nothing more,’ that was an answer given by English workingmen recently.

Only the necessary is necessary, that’s the motto of the whole world henceforward.

But it needs a shock. That’s for us, the directors, to look after. Slaves must have directors.

An aristocrat is irresistible when he goes in for democracy! To sacrifice life, your own or another’s is nothing to you. You are just the man that’s needed. It’s just such a man as you that I need. I know no one but you.

You are the leader, you are the sun and I am your worm.

”

Oh, I’ve studied you! I often watch you on the sly! There’s a lot of simpleheartedness and naivete about you still. Do you know that? There still is, there is! You must be suffering and suffering genuinely from that simpleheartedness. I love beauty.

I am a nihilist, but I love beauty.

Are nihilists incapable of loving beauty? It’s only idols they dislike, but I love an idol. You are my idol! You injure no one, and everyone hates you. You treat everyone as an equal, and yet everyone is afraid of you—that’s good.

You are my idol! You injure no one, and everyone hates you. You treat everyone as an equal, and yet everyone is afraid of you—that’s good. Nobody would slap you on the shoulder. You are an awful aristocrat.

An aristocrat is irresistible when he goes in for democracy!

To sacrifice life, your own or another’s is nothing to you. You are just the man that’s needed. It’s just such a man as you that I need. I know no one but you.

There are lots of Shigalovs, but only one man, one man in Russia has hit on the first step and knows how to take it. And I am that man! Why do you look at me? I need you, you; without you I am nothing.

Without you I am a fly, a bottled idea; Columbus without America.

”

anyway, a gallant protest. ‘How can we expect a cultured man not to commit a murder, if he is in need of money.’ But these are only the first fruits.

The Russian God has already been vanquished by cheap vodka.

The peasants are drunk, the mothers are drunk, the children are drunk, the churches are empty, and in the peasant courts one hears, ‘Two hundred lashes or stand us a bucket of vodka.’ Oh, this generation has only to grow up.

I am a scoundrel, not a socialist. Ha ha ha! I’m only sorry there’s no time. I promised Karmazinov to begin in May, and to make an end by October. Is that too soon? Ha ha! Do you know what, Stavrogin?

Though the Russian people use foul language, there’s nothing cynical about them so far.

Do you know the serfs had more self-respect than Karmazinov? Though they were beaten they always preserved their gods, which is more than Karmazinov’s done.”

“We shall say that he is ‘in hiding,’ ” Verhovensky said softly, in a sort of tender whisper, as though he really were drunk indeed. “

Do you know the magic of that phrase, ‘he is in hiding’?

But he will appear, he will appear. We’ll set a legend going better than the Skoptsis’. He exists, but no one has seen him. Oh, what a legend one can set going! And the great thing is it will be a new force at work!

And we need that; that’s what they are crying for. What can Socialism do: it’s destroyed the old forces but hasn’t brought in any new. But in this we have a force, and what a force! Incredible.

We only need one lever to lift up the earth. Everything will rise up!

”

“You are lying, you miserable, profligate, perverted, little aristocrat! I don’t believe you, you’ve the appetite of a wolf! … Understand that you’ve cost me such a price, I can’t give you up now! There’s no one on earth but you!

I invented you abroad; I invented it all, looking at you.

If I hadn’t watched you from my corner, nothing of all this would have entered my head!”

He believed in the reality of that “cart” as he believed that I was sitting by his side, and he expected it that morning, at once, that very minute, and all this on account of his Herzen and some poem!

Such complete, absolute ignorance of everyday reality was touching and somehow repulsive.

At last he left off crying, got up from the sofa and began walking about the room again, continuing to talk to me, though he looked out of the window every minute and listened to every sound in the passage. Our conversation was still disconnected.

“

That makes it worse. They’ll find out I’ve done nothing and flog me for it.

”

“Caps off!” he said breathlessly and hardly audibly. “On your knees!” he squealed, to the surprise of everyone, to his own surprise too, and perhaps the very unexpectedness of the position was the explanation of what followed.

Can a sledge on a switchback at carnival stop short as it flies down the hill?

What made it worse, Andrey Antonovitch had been all his life serene in character, and never shouted or stamped at anyone; and such people are always the most dangerous if it once happens that something sets their sledge sliding downhill.

“Yes, I shall make my farewell; I shall say my Merci and depart and there … in Karlsruhe … I shall close my eyes.” Karmazinov was gradually becoming maudlin.

Like many of our great writers (and there are numbers of them amongst us), he could not resist praise, and began to be limp at once, in spite of his penetrating wit.

But I consider this is pardonable. They say that one of our Shakespeares positively blurted out in private conversation that “we great men can’t do otherwise,” and so on, and, what’s more, was unaware of it.

There was a note of desperate challenge in these words—everyone realised it. The accusation was unmistakable, though perhaps it was a surprise to herself.

She was like a man who shuts his eyes and throws himself from the roof.

But Nikolay Stavrogin’s answer was even more astounding.

I have already hinted that some low fellows of different sorts had made their appearance amongst us.

In turbulent times of upheaval or transition low characters always come to the front everywhere.

I am not speaking now of the so-called “advanced” people who are always in a hurry to be in advance of everyone else (their absorbing anxiety) and who always have some more or less definite, though often very stupid, aim.

I repeat again, there was still even among us a small group who held themselves aloof from the beginning, and even locked themselves up.

But what lock can stand against a law of nature? Daughters will grow up even in the most careful families, and it is essential for grown-up daughters to dance.

And so all these people, too, ended by subscribing to the governesses’ fund.

Some wood-nymph squeaked in the bushes. Gluck played the violin among the reeds. The title of the piece he was playing was given in full, but no one knew it, so that one would have had to look it up in a musical dictionary.

Meanwhile a fog came on, such a fog, such a fog, that it was more like a million pillows than a fog.

And suddenly everything disappears and the great genius is crossing the frozen Volga in a thaw. Two and a half pages are filled with the crossing, and yet he falls through the ice. The genius is drowning—you imagine he was drowned?

they are only material for his jests.

He takes another man’s idea, tacks on to it its antithesis, and the epigram is made.

There is such a thing as crime, there is no such thing as crime; there is no such thing as justice, there are no just men; atheism, Darwinism, the Moscow bells. … But alas, he no longer believes in the Moscow bells; Rome, laurels.

no one can believe that it is such elementary stupidity. ‘It’s impossible that there’s nothing more in it,’ everyone says to himself and tries to find the secret of it, sees a mystery in it, tries to read between the lines—the effect is attained!

Oh, never has stupidity been so solemnly rewarded, though it has so often deserved it.

… For, en parenthese, stupidity is of as much service to humanity as the loftiest genius. …”

The enthusiasm of the youth of today is as pure and bright as in our age. All that has happened is a change of aim, the replacing of one beauty by another!

The whole difficulty lies in the question which is more beautiful, Shakespeare or boots, Raphael or petroleum?

”

And this same expression, as it were, of shame was reflected in the whole public, even on the most sullen figures that had come out of the refreshment-room. For some time all were silent and gazed with angry perplexity.

When a man is ashamed he generally begins to get angry and is disposed to be cynical.

By degrees a murmur arose in the audience.

Sparks and embers were carried a long way in all directions. People put them out as best they could. Some helped to put the fire out while others stood about, admiring it.

A great fire at night always has a thrilling and exhilarating effect.

This is what explains the attraction of fireworks. But in that case the artistic regularity with which the fire is presented and the complete lack of danger give an impression of lightness and playfulness like the effect of a glass of champagne.

“Not likely.

The fire is in the minds of men and not in the roofs of houses.

Pull him down and give it up! Better give it up, much better! Let it put itself out. Aie, who is crying now? An old woman! It’s an old woman shouting. Why have they forgotten the old woman?”

“ ‘Calendars always tell lies,’ ” he observed with a polite smile, but, a little ashamed; he made haste to add: “

It’s dull to live by the calendar, Liza.

”

“And is that all? You’ve quite lost your flow of words.

I’ve lived my hour and that’s enough.

Do you remember Christopher Ivanovitch?”

“That’s a question to worry about! Especially as you know the answer yourself perfectly well, and understand it better than anyone on earth, and were counting on it yourself.

I am a young lady, my heart has been trained on the opera, that’s how it all began, that’s the solution.

”

Don’t despise the poor fool, and don’t laugh at the tear that dropped just now.

I am awfully given to crying with self-pity.

Come, that’s enough, that’s enough. I am no good for anything and you are no good for anything; it’s as bad for both of us, so let’s comfort ourselves with that. Anyway, it eases our vanity.”

“

I’ve burnt myself in a candle, nothing more.

Surely you are not crying, too? You should show less feeling and better breeding. …”

“And this is Stavrogin, ‘the vampire Stavrogin,’ as you are called by a lady here who is in love with you! Listen! I have told you already,

I’ve put all my life into one hour and I am at peace.

Do the same with yours … though you’ve no need to: you have plenty of ‘hours’ and ‘moments’ of all sorts before you.”

Perhaps I really may become a nurse unless I happen appropriately to die today; but if I do I won’t be your nurse, though, of course, you need one as much as any crippled creature.

I always fancied that you would take me to some place where there was a huge wicked spider, big as a man, and we should spend our lives looking at it and being afraid of it. That’s how our love would spend itself.

Appeal to Dashenka; she will go with you anywhere you like.”

“Of course she won’t,” said Pyotr Stepanovitch with all the confidence of a perfect simpleton, “for legally … Ech, what a man you are! What if she did guess?

Women are so clever at shutting their eyes to such things, you don’t understand women!

Apart from it’s being altogether to her interest to marry you now, because there’s no denying she’s disgraced herself;

“Foo. Damn it! What a maze of false sentiment a man can get into!” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, shaking with rage. “Yes, really, you ought to be killed! She ought simply to spit at you!

Fine sort of ‘magic boat,’ you are; you are a broken-down, leaky old hulk!

… You ought to pull yourself together if only from spite! Ech! Why, what difference would it make to you since you ask for a bullet through your brains yourself?”

“

I am a buffoon, but I don’t want you, my better half, to be one!

Do you understand me?”

but they also believed that Pyotr Stepanovitch was playing with them like pawns. And yet they knew, too, that in any case they would all meet on the spot next day and that Shatov’s fate was sealed.

They suddenly felt like flies caught in a web by a huge spider; they were furious, but they were trembling with terror.

Pyotr Stepanovitch, of course, had treated them badly; it might all have gone off far more harmoniously and easily if he had taken the trouble to embellish the facts ever so little.

Half an hour and more passed. Pyotr Stepanovitch did not hurry himself; he ate with relish, rang the bell, asked for a different kind of mustard, then for beer, without saying a word to Liputin. He was pondering deeply.

He was capable of doing two things at once⁠—eating with relish and pondering deeply.

Liputin loathed him so intensely at last that he could not tear himself away. It was like a nervous obsession. He counted every morsel of beefsteak that Pyotr Stepanovitch put into his mouth;

If anyone doubts that such fantastic incidents occur in everyday Russian life, even now, let him look into the biographies of all the Russian exiles abroad. Not one of them escaped with more wisdom or real justification.

It has always been the unrestrained domination of phantoms and nothing more.

Running home, he began by locking himself in, getting out his travelling bag, and feverishly beginning to pack. His chief anxiety was the question of money, and how much he could rescue from the impending ruin—and by what means.

“I … I am not exactly. …

Since I cannot be a Russian, I became a Slavophil.

” He smiled a wry smile with the effort of one who feels he has made a strained and inappropriate jest.

“

You’ve given me something to laugh at for the rest of my life; I shan’t charge you anything; I shall laugh at you in my sleep!

I have never seen anything funnier than you last night.”

“That’s rude again, putting it down to my nerves. I bet that if I’d said his name was to be that other … horrible name, you’d have agreed at once and not have noticed it even!

Oh, men, the mean ungrateful creatures, they are all alike!

”

As for your vengeance, let me tell you that it’s a mistake to cock your pistol: that’s absolutely against your interests at the present moment. But if you threaten to shoot me tomorrow, or the day after, you’ll gain nothing by it but unnecessary trouble.

You may kill me, but sooner or later you’ll come to my system all the same.

Goodbye.”

“

I’ve always been surprised at everyone’s going on living,

” said Kirillov, not hearing his remark.

“You ape, you assent to get the better of me. Hold your tongue; you won’t understand anything.

If there is no God, then I am God.

”

“Because all will has become mine. Can it be that no one in the whole planet, after making an end of God and believing in his own will, will dare to express his self-will on the most vital point?

It’s like a beggar inheriting a fortune and being afraid of it and not daring to approach the bag of gold, thinking himself too weak to own it.

I want to manifest my self-will. I may be the only one, but I’ll do it.”

“I am bound to show my unbelief,” said Kirillov, walking about the room. “I have no higher idea than disbelief in God. I have all the history of mankind on my side.

Man has done nothing but invent God so as to go on living, and not kill himself; that’s the whole of universal history up till now.

I am the first one in the whole history of mankind who would not invent God. Let them know it once for all.”

Man has hitherto been so unhappy and so poor because he has been afraid to assert his will in the highest point and has shown his self-will only in little things, like a schoolboy. I am awfully unhappy, for I’m awfully afraid.

Terror is the curse of man.

… But I will assert my will, I am bound to believe that I don’t believe. I will begin and will make an end of it and open the door, and will save.

the attribute of my godhead is self-will! That’s all I can do to prove in the highest point my independence and my new terrible freedom. For it is very terrible.

I am killing myself to prove my independence and my new terrible freedom.

”

No, better simply the high road, better simply to set off for it, and walk along it and to think of nothing so long as he could put off thinking.

The high road is something very very long, of which one cannot see the end⁠—like human life, like human dreams.

There is an idea in the open road, but what sort of idea is there in travelling with posting tickets? Posting tickets mean an end to ideas. Vive la grande route and then as God wills.

The high road is something very very long, of which one cannot see the end—like human life, like human dreams.

There is an idea in the open road, but what sort of idea is there in travelling with posting tickets? Posting tickets mean an end to ideas.

Vive la grande route and then as God wills.

“Five, yes, five, five, five, un tout petit rien,” Stepan Trofimovitch assented with a blissful smile.

Ask a peasant to do anything for you, and if he can, and will, he will serve you with care and friendliness; but ask him to fetch you vodka⁠—and his habitual serenity and friendliness will pass at once into a sort of joyful haste and alacrity; he will be as keen in your interest as though you were one of his family.

The peasant who fetches vodka—even though you are going to drink it and not he and he knows that beforehand—seems, as it were, to be enjoying part of your future gratification.

but ask him to fetch you vodka—and his habitual serenity and friendliness will pass at once into a sort of joyful haste and alacrity; he will be as keen in your interest as though you were one of his family.

The peasant who fetches vodka⁠—even though you are going to drink it and not he and he knows that beforehand⁠—seems, as it were, to be enjoying part of your future gratification.

Within three minutes (the tavern was only two paces away), a bottle and a large greenish wineglass were set on the table before Stepan Trofimovitch.

I will be of service even on the high road. I’ve always been of use, I always told them so et à cette chère ingrate. …

Oh, we will forgive, we will forgive, first of all we will forgive all and always.⁠ ⁠… We will hope that we too shall be forgiven. Yes, for all, every one of us, have wronged one another, all are guilty!

”