The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky

• “It sometimes happens that [the odd man] bears within himself the heart of the whole, while the other people of his epoch have all for some reason been torn away from it for a time by some kind of flooding wind.”
• Fyodor’s first wife was well-off, while he was not. Narrator suggests Adelaida was an echo of foreign influence, a mind imprisoned, wanting to assert her feminine independence and go against social conventions, despite the despotism of her relatives. Fyodor latched on for the potential of social status. Neither loved each other, both using each other to satiate their respective desires for anti-conformity (Adelaida) and status (Fyodor)
• When Adelaida left him, Fyodor gleefully recounted his woes to all. “One would think you had been promoted, you’re so pleased despite all your woes!”
• In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we.
  • Wickedness stems from banal ignorance
• Fyodor abandoned his first son, not out of malice, but simply because he totally forgot about him
• “Who was apparently not wicked but had become a most insufferable crank from sheer idleness.”
• “…that eternally needy and miserable mass of our students of both sexes who…habitually haunt the doorways of various newspapers and magazines…to invent anything better than the eternal repetition of one and the same plea for copying work or translations from the French.”
• “The question of atheism…of the Tower of Babel built precisely without God, not to go from earth to heaven but to bring heaven down to earth.”
  • The issue with bringing heaven to earth, is that it runs counter to the theme of delayed gratification that the concept of heaven attempts to instil in followers. Heaven is like a macro-level delayed gratification mechanism, urging people to forego selfish urges in promise of blissful paradise—yet this paradise realistically lies within the future generations of the social group. When we try to bring blissful paradise to earth with no faith, the future risks crumbling in the wake of hedonic indulgence—hell. Faith is our ability to look ahead, and if we don’t look ahead, we get nowhere.
• “Perhaps…this tested and already thousand year old instrument for the moral regeneration of man from slavery to freedom and to moral perfection may turn into a double edged weapon, which may lead a person not to humility and ultimate self-control but, on the contrary, to the most satanic pride—that is, to chains and not freedom.”
  • Like Buddhas story of self-indulgence to self-mortification
• “The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lies…does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others.”
• “It sometimes feels very good to take offense…he likes feeling offended…and thus he teaches the point of real hostility.”
• About a doctor: “the more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular.”
• “And avoid fear, though fear is simply the consequence of every lie.”
  • A precondition to fear is uncertainty, and we sometimes fill in that uncertainty with a more certain and fearsome outcome. This is the lie.
  • Are there honest fear responses? If I see a venomous snake, is being fearful of that signal honest?…the fear is still predicated on a projection into the future, I suppose, that the snake could harm me, but it hasn’t harmed me yet. Even if it bites me, I may become scared of the consequences, but that’s because I don’t know what will happen (uncertainty). Fear depends on a projection, and that projection is always a lie, an abstraction, a fiction.
• Ivan proposes against separation of church and state. Suggests that the state should end by being accounted worth of becoming the church, from a lower to higher type.
• At the time in Russia, criminals were punished mechanically, cut off like an infected limb for the preservation of society. Ivan suggests the state should strive towards the idea of regeneration of man anew, of their restoration and salvation.
• The elder claims the mechanical punishment option is not punishment, it only chafes the heart. The real punishment lies in the acknowledgment of one’s own conscience.
• You will behold great sorrow, and in this sorrow you will be happy…seek happiness in sorrow.
• Mitri to Alyosha: “the terrible thing is that beauty is not only fearful but also mysterious. Here the devil is struggling with God, and the battlefield is the human heart.”
  • Selfish urges battling with communal urges — both urges exist, selfish being more rewarding in the present (tangible and familiar), communal being more rewarding in the future (less tangible, feels more godly and ethereal)
• Do they truly love? Or do they simply love their own virtue?
• “In our great intelligence, we’ve stopped flogging our peasants, but they go on whipping themselves.”
• Father Paissy in a remark about growing scientific interest: “…after hard analysis, the learned ones…have absolutely nothing left of what was once holy. But they have examined the parts and missed the whole, and their blindness is even worthy of wonder. Meanwhile the whole [Christianity] stands before their eyes as immovably as ever, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
• Fyodor Pavlovich: “wickedness is sweet: everyone denounces it, but everyone lives in it, only they do it on the sly and I do it openly. And for this sincerity of mine, the wicked ones all attack me”
• “But you need him in order to continually contemplate your high deed of faithfulness, and to reproach him for his unfaithfulness. And it all comes from your pride. Oh, there is much humility and humiliation in it, but all of it comes from pride…”
• “Schoolchildren are merciless people: separately they’re God’s angels, but together, especially in school, they’re quite often merciless.”
• “For the daughter—love, and for the mother—death.” o In reference to Madame Khokhlakov’s greed for her daughter, and unwillingness to let her crippled daughter marry Alyosha. Her daughter depends on her, and once she no longer depends on her mother, for where can the mother find her worth?
• “The stupider, the clearer. Stupidity is brief and guileless, while reason hedges and hides. Reason is a scoundrel, stupidity is direct and honest.”
  • Reason involves nuance, making it complex and elusive. Stupidity takes shortcuts, slashing away at nuance, making things easier to understand but often less true.
• “It is precisely the defencelessness of these creatures the tempts the torturers, the angelic trustfulness of the child, who has nowhere to turn and no one to turn to.”
• “If I wanted to understand something, I would immediately have to betray the fact, but I’ve made up my mind to stick to the fact…”
• “For nothing has ever been more insufferable for man than freedom! But do you see these stones in this bare, scorching dessert? Turn them into bread and mankind will run after you like sheep, grateful and obedient, though eternally trembling lest you withdraw your hand and your loaves cease for them…”
• “No science will give them bread as long as they remain free, but in the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us: ‘Better that you enslave us, but feed us.’ They will finally understand that freedom and earthly bread in plenty for everyone are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share among themselves.”
• There is no more ceaseless or tormenting care for man, as long as he remains free, than to find someone to bow down to as soon as possible. But man seeks to bow down before that which is indisputable [to all of man] …for it must happen all together. And this need for communality of worship is the chief torment of each man individually, of mankind as a whole, from the beginning of the ages. In the cause of universal worship, they have destroyed each other with the sword.”
• “Without a firm idea of what he lives for, man will not consent to live and will sooner destroy himself than remain on earth, even if there is bread all around him.”
• “There is nothing more seductive for man than the freedom of his conscience, but there is nothing more tormenting either…There are three powers…capable of conquering and holding captive forever these feeble rebels, for their own happiness—these powers are miracle, mystery, and authority.”
• “If in the name of heavenly bread thousands follow you, what will become of the millions of creatures not strong enough to forgo earthly bread for the sake of the heavenly?…the weak too are dear to us…depraved and rebels, but in the end it is they who will become obedient. They will marvel at us…because we…have agreed to suffer freedom and to rule over them [ouch]—so terrible will it become for them in the end to be free!”
• “Since man cannot bear to be left without miracles, he will go and create miracles for himself, his own miracles of quacks, or women’s magic, though he be rebellious, heretical, and godless a hundred times over.” o Modern examples are astrology, tarot cards, and politics
• “You [Jesus] did not come down [from the cross] because, again, you did not want to enslave man by a miracle and thirsted for faith that is free, not miraculous. You thirsted for a love that is free, and not for the servile raptures of a slave before a power that has left him permanently terrified.”
• “Mankind in its entirety has always yearned to arrange things so that they must be universal. There have been many great nations…but the higher these nations stood, the unhappier they were, for they were more strongly aware than others for the need for a universal union of mankind.”
• “Freedom, free reason, and science will lead them into such a maze, and confront them with such miracles and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, unruly and ferocious, will exterminate themselves [because they only have the power to bring themselves down]; others, unruly but feeble, will exterminate each other; and the remaining third, feeble and wretched, will crawl to our feet and cry out to us: ‘Yes, you were right…save us from ourselves.’”
• “For he is accustomed to relying only on himself, he has separated his unit from the whole, he has accustomed his soul to not believing in people’s help, in people or in mankind, and now only trembles lest his money and acquired privileges perish.”
• “Everywhere now the human mind has begun laughably not to understand that a man’s true security lies not in his own solitary effort, but in the general wholeness of humanity.”
• “For the world says: ‘You have needs, therefore satisfy them…Do not be afraid to satisfy them, but even increase them’—this is the current teaching of the world. And in this they see freedom. But what comes of this right to increase one’s needs? For the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; for the poor, envy and murder.”
• “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 only for mutual envy, for pleasure-seeking and self-display…I ask you: is such a man free?”
• “The idea of serving mankind, of the…oneness of people, is fading…for how can one drop one’s habits, where will this slave go now that he is so accustomed to satisfying the innumerable needs he himself has invented?…They have succeeded in amassing more and more things, but have less and less joy.”
• “If you love each thing, you will perceive the mystery of God in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin tirelessly to perceive more and more each day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an entire, universal love.”
  • Being present and attentive about life’s intricacies. There lies an eternity in every grain of sand, every bird’s chirp, every gentle smile. If you can’t see the eternity, you aren’t looking deeply enough
• “My young brother asked forgiveness of the birds: it seems senseless, yet it is right, for all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world.”
• “Let it be madness to ask forgiveness of the birds, still it would be easier for the birds, and for a child, and for any animal near you, if you yourself were more gracious than you are now, if only by a drop, still it would be easier.”
  • When those ridicule the practice of non-harm by the Buddhists, who refuse to even harm an insect, this is what I think of. If we can learn to love even pesky insects, reducing our disgust and hatred of them, we reduce the chances of that hatred and disgust being directed toward fellow humans
• “By shifting your own laziness and powerlessness into others, you will end by sharing in Satan’s pride and murmuring against god.”
  • Radiate selflessness, not selfishness.
• “If the wickedness of people arouses indignation and insurmountable grief in you, to the point that you desire to revenge yourself upon the wicked, fear that feeling most of all.”
• “The righteous man departs, but his light remains…Your work is for the whole, your deed is for the future.”
  • This light that he leaves behind is heaven—a better place to live.
• “What is hell? The suffering of being no longer able to love.”
• “But Rakitin, who could be quite sensitive in understanding everything that concerned himself, was quite crude in understanding the feelings and sensations of his neighbours—partly because of his youthful inexperience, and partly because of his great egoism.”
• “One should forgive pathetic phrases, one must. Pathetic phrases ease the soul, without them men’s grief would be too heavy.”
• When Mitya is being questioned and has to remove his clothes: “If everyone is undressed, it’s not shameful, but when only one is undressed and the others are all looking—it’s a disgrace!”
  • How I felt on a bus ride in Seattle, near the end of the pandemic, when I forgot a mask (regardless, the mandate had recently lifted) and everyone had still worn a mask, so that I was the only maskless—“undressed”—person on the bus. The social pressure I felt was unbearably crushing. Lol
• To suffer and be purified by suffering
• “Because what is virtue?—answer me that, Alexei. I have one virtue and a Chinese has another—so it’s a relative thing. Or not?..I just keep wondering how people can live and think nothing about these things.” - Mitya to Alyosha
• The same people who naively neglect forces larger than themselves are most prone to being thrust around by those forces. Ivan is a man of science, striving towards objective truth and ridiculing the unknown. But his naive rejection of the unknown leaves him vulnerable to his passions, which ironically makes the journey to truth much more difficult
• “You’re too intelligent, sir. You love money…you also love respect, because you’re very proud, you love women’s charms exceedingly, and most of all you love loving in peaceful prosperity, without bowing to anyone.”
• “If everything on earth were sensible, nothing would happen.”
• “Without suffering, what pleasure would there be in [life]—everything would turn into an endless prayer service: holy, but a bit dull.”
• Mentions of a legend in which a philosopher doubtful of the afterlife, who mentions the lights will simply go out at death, is sentenced in the afterlife to walk in the dark for a quadrillion kilometres.
  • Metaphorically, those who are dismissive about sin, not fearful of consequences beyond their own life, are leaving society in the dark, bound to walk aimlessly for a quadrillion kilometres. Faith in something larger provides the guiding light; lack of faith leaves us aimless. Note that this does not imply that we must believe in a supernatural afterlife, rather we must recognize that life continues after us, and we can provide to that afterlife rather than burden it.
• Ivan’s spiritual ambivalence eats away at him. He yearns for the certainty of faith found in the devout, seemingly ignorant, and spiritually blissful followers (like the plump wife of a merchant)
• “Out of pride he will understand that he should not murmur against the momentariness of life, and he will love his brother then without any reward. Love will satisfy only the moment of life, but the very awareness of its momentariness will increase its fire.”
  • Each of our lives may be momentary, but they are part of a larger symphony. Seeing it as momentary—divorced from prior or future generations—is a mistake, an oversimplification. You couldn’t exist without your ancestors, and the future couldn’t exist without you, and if you believe in making the world better, you have a duty to serve the past, present, and future.
• “God, in whom he did not believe, and his truth were overcoming his heart, which still did not want to submit…He will either rise into the light of truth, or…perish in hatred, taking revenge on himself and everyone for having served something he does not believe in.”
• Regarding Dmitri’s trial turnout: “Hysterical, greedy, almost morbid curiosity could be read on [the ladies’] faces.” Dostoevsky does a great job at highlighting the comical yet concerning female urge for gossip and drama.
• “The contemptuously curious eyes fixed upon her by our scandal-loving public.”
• “For now we are either horrified or pretend that we are horrified, while, on the contrary, relishing the spectacle, like lovers of strong, eccentric sensations that stir our cynical and lazy idleness, or, finally, like little children waving the frightening ghosts away, and hiding our heads under the pillow until the frightening vision is gone, so as to forget it immediately afterwards in games and merriment.”
• We were no different in the late 1800s. Gobbling up stories of suffering with relish and a hint of concern and forgetting them shortly after.
• “Everything contrary to the idea of a citizen, a complete, even hostile separation from society: ‘Let the whole world burn, so long as I am all right.’”
• “There are souls that in their narrowness blame the whole world. But overwhelm such a soul with mercy, give it love, and it will…expand and show how merciful God is, and how beautiful and just people are.”