Just One Little Onion
“You see, Alyoshechka,” Grushenka turned to him, laughing nervously, “I’m boasting to Rakitka that I gave an onion, but I’m not boasting to you, I’ll tell you about it for a different reason. It’s just…
“You see, Alyoshechka,” Grushenka turned to him, laughing nervously, “I’m boasting to Rakitka that I gave an onion, but I’m not boasting to you, I’ll tell you about it for a different reason. It’s just…
Ivan has maintained that people bear no responsibility for their wishes— “who has not the right to wish?”—a position that directly contradicts the Sermon on the Mount, which deems not just bad actions but also…
Brothers, do not be afraid of men’s sin, love man also in his sin, for this likeness of God’s love is the height of love on earth. –Zosima, in Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“And I shall also tell you, dear mother, that each of us is guilty in everything before everyone, and I most of all.” At that mother even smiled, she wept and smiled: “How can it…
And every day, down to this day, I have remembered the long-suffering servant of God, Mikhail, in my prayers. –Starets Zosima, in Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Rakitin,” [Alyosha Karamazov] suddenly said loudly and firmly, “don’t taunt me with having rebelled against my God. I don’t want to hold any anger against you, and therefore you be kinder, too. I’ve lost such…
A God-fearing Orthodox peasant talking about thieves, with a shrug of the shoulders, as one talks about a social necessity: “It’s a busy life—there’s always a shop or a bank to rob. And where would…
Mama, do not weep, life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we do not want to know it, and if we did want to know it, tomorrow there would be paradise the…
In the fearful years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months in prison queues in Leningrad. One day somebody ‘identified’ me. Beside me, in the queue, there was a woman with blue lips. She…
This is the Akhmatova who, in a friend’s words, could not bear to see another person’s suffering, though she bore her own without complaint. –D. M. Thomas, Introduction to his translation of Anna Akhmatova, Selected…