The Brothers Karamazov
First published 1876 · English · 796 pages
- Novels
- Historical fiction
- Science and nature
Dostoevsky's last and largest novel, set in a provincial Russian town. It centres on the Karamazov family: a selfish, disorderly father and his three very different sons, the passionate Dmitri, the intellectual Ivan and the gentle Alyosha, along with a fourth, illegitimate young man in the household. A bitter quarrel over money and love draws them together. Around this family drama the book weighs questions of faith, doubt, suffering, free will and moral responsibility. It is often considered one of the supreme achievements of world fiction.
Quotes
Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.
As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naïve and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.
There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God?
For socialism is not merely the labor question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth.