To kill for murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands. Anyone murdered by brigands, whose throat is cut at night in a wood, or something of that sort, must surely hope to escape till the very last minute. There have been instances when a man has still hoped for escape, running or begging for mercy after his throat was cut. But in the other case all that last hope, which makes dying ten times as easy, taken away for certain. There is the sentence, and the whole awful torture lies in the fact that there is certainly no escape, and there is no torture in the world more terrible. You may lead a soldier out and set him facing the cannon in battle and fire at him and he'll still hope; but read a sentence of certain death over that same soldier, and he will go out of his mind or burst into tears. Who can tell whether human nature is able to bear this without madness.
Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch Myshkin, The Idiot
I was finally roused from this gloomy state, I remember, one evening on reaching Switzerland at Bale, and I was roused by the bray of an ass in the market-place. I was immensely struck with the ass, and for some reason extraordinarily pleased with it, and suddenly everything seemed to clear up in my head.
"An ass? That's odd," observed Lizaveta Prokofyevna. "Yet there's nothing odd about it; one of us may even fall in love with an ass," she observed, looking wrathfully at the laughing girls. "It's happened in mythology. Go on, prince."
"I've been awfully fond of asses ever since; they have a special attraction for me. I began to ask about them because I'd never seen one before, and I
understood at once what a useful creature it was--industrious, strong, patient, cheap, longsuffering. And so, through the ass, Switzerland began to attract me, so that my melancholy passed completely."
Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch Myshkin, The Idiot
But I'll add though that there is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you for ever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps, the most important of your ideas.
Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch Myshkin, The Idiot
"'Anyone who attacks individual charity.' I began, 'attacks human nature and casts contempt on personal dignity. But the
organization of "public charity" and the problem of individual freedom are two distinct questions, and not mutually exclusive. Individual kindness will always remain, because it's an individual impulse, the living impulse of one personality to exert a direct influence upon another.'"
Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch Myshkin, The Idiot
There is, indeed, nothing more annoying than to be, for instance, wealthy, of good family, nice-looking, fairly intelligent, and even good-natured, and yet to
have no talents, no special faculty, no peculiarity even, not one idea of one's own, to be precisely "like other people."
Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch Myshkin, The Idiot
...Roman Catholicism is even worse than atheism itself, in my opinion! Yes, that's my opinion! Atheism only preaches a negation, but Catholicism goes further: it preaches a distorted Christ, a Christ calumniated and defamed by themselves, the opposite of Christ! It preaches the Antichrist, I declare it does, I assure you it does! This is the self...Roman Catholicism cannot hold its position without universal political supremacy, and cries: 'Non possumus!' To my thinking Roman Catholicism is not even a religion, but simply the continuation of the Western Roman Empire, and everything in it is subordinated to that idea, faith to begin with. The Pope seized the earth, an earthly throne, and grasped the sword; everything has gone on in the same way since, only they have added to the sword lying, fraud, deceit, fanaticism, superstition, villainy. They have trifled with the most holy, truthful, sincere, fervent feelings of the people; they have bartered it all, all for money, for base earthly power.
Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch Myshkin, The Idiot
Please e-mail your additions or comments to mrtom.
[Back to Top]