Kind of boring if you're looking for a read to entertain you. On the other hand, if you want to really read closely and contemplate a book, this one is full of philosophy. My favorite quote on charity is from this book.

Main character = Jesus. ( )

Another classic from the golden age of Russian literature. I agree with W.J. Leatherbarrow, author of the introductory section of my edition, that this book seems the most personal of Dostoevsky's major works. He was in torment while writing it; among other things losing his shirt at the gambling tables in Baden Baden and quarreling openly with Turgenev, who he despised for his aristocratic airs and leanings towards all things European. (On a side note I happened to be in Baden Baden a few months ago and spent a night gambling in the same beautiful rooms; I tried to breathe in centuries past and conjure an image of Dostoevsky, in his mid-forties and at the height of his literary powers, but hopelessly addicted....)

Brilliant, deep, hardcore ... and lots of great quotes.

On Capital Punishment, and echoing Dostoevsky's own sentence and ultimate pardon:
"“It’s a violation of the soul, nothing less! It is written: “Thou shalt not kill”; because he killed, should he be killed as well? No, that’s wrong. I saw it all a month ago and I can picture it to this day. .... To kill for murder is an immeasurably greater evil than the actual crime itself. Judicial murder is immeasurably more horrible than one committed by a robber. Someone killed by a robber, knifed at night in a forest or somewhere, certainly keeps hoping for rescue right up to the last second. ... But all this final hope, which makes dying ten times easier is taken away by that certain; the sentence is pronounced and the whole agony resides in the fact that there’s no escape. There’s no greater torture in the world than that. ... Who can say that human nature can bear a thing like that without going mad? Why this disgusting, pointless, unnecessary mockery? Perhaps there exists a man who has had his sentence read out to him and been allowed to suffer before being told: “Be off, you’ve been pardoned.” That man could tell you perhaps. Christ himself spoke of such agony and terror. No, a man should not be treated so!”"

On Children:
"“I spent all my time with children, just children. ... I used to tell them everything, keeping nothing back. Their parents and relatives used to get very angry with me because their children couldn’t do without me in the end, always crowding about me; the schoolmaster finally got to be my worst enemy. ... What were they all so afraid of? You can tell a child everything – everything; I’ve always been struck by how little adults understand children, even their own fathers and mothers. Nothing should be kept from children on the pretext that they’re little and it’s too soon for them to know. Such a sad, wretched idea! ... Adults don’t realize that children can give extremely valuable advice in the most difficult situations. Heavens! When that pretty little bird looks at you, so happy and trusting, you are ashamed to betray it! ... Later on he started laughing at me when I said that neither of us would teach them anything, they would teach us. ... The soul is healed through contact with children.”"

“...I really don’t like being among adults, grown-up people; I’ve noticed that long since. I don’t like it because I can’t cope with them. Whatever they say to me, however kind they are to me, I never feel at ease with them for some reason, and I’m always terribly glad when I can get away to my friends – and my friends have always been children – but not because I am a child myself, it was simply because I have always been drawn to children.”

On Crime:
“Impossible crimes? But I can certainly assure you that exactly the same sort of crime, worse perhaps, took place in the past, always has done, not just in this country, but everywhere, and I imagine will continue to take place for a long time to come. The only difference is that in the past they didn’t receive so much publicity, whereas nowadays people have begun to talk openly and even write about them, that’s why it seems such criminals have only just appeared.”

On life and death; what power and torment are in these words:
"I do not recognize any jurisdiction over me and I know that I am beyond the reach of any judicial power. Quite recently I had an amusing thought: what if I suddenly took it into my head to kill anyone I liked, ten people at once even, or perpetrate something frightful, something regarded as the worst possible thing in the world, the court would be at a loss how to deal with me, having two or three weeks to live, now that torture has been abolished. I would die in comfort in their hospital ... I can’t understand why the same idea doesn’t occur to people in my position, not even as a joke. ... Trying to sweeten the last hours of my life? Can’t they realize that the more I forget myself, the more I surrender to this last illusion of life and love, with which they try to screen off Meyer’s wall and everything that is frankly and openly written on it, the unhappier they make me? What do I want with your nature, your Pavlovsk park, your dawns and sunsets, your blue skies and your smug faces, when all this feast that has no end has begun by excluding me alone? What is there for me in all this beauty, when I am forced to be aware every minute, every second, that even this tiny fly buzzing in the sunbeam near me, even that is a participant in all this festival and chorus, knows its place, loves it, and is happy, while I am the sole outcast, and only my cowardice has prevented me from wanting to face it before now! ... What point is there in my humility in all this? Why couldn’t I just be devoured without demanding that I praise what is devouring me? Will somebody up there really be offended that I don’t want to wait out my two weeks? ... I shall die, looking directly at the source of power and life, and I shall not want this life! If I had had the power not to be born, I would certainly not have accepted existence on these absurd terms. But I still have the power to die, though the days I render back are numbered. No great power, and no great revolt either.”

Also:
"What if I didn’t have to die! If life was returned to me – what an eternity it would be! And it would all be mine! I would turn every minute into an age, nothing would be wasted, every minute would be accounted for, nothing would be frittered away!”

On the good-hearted:
"God seeks good people, of course, and he has no use for the wicked and wayward; the wayward ones especially, who decide one thing today and talk differently tomorrow. You follow me Alexandra Ivanovna? They say I’m a queer one, Prince, but I can tell people apart. The heart is what matters, the rest doesn’t count. You need brains too of course...perhaps that’s what matters, after all. Stop smiling, Aglaya, I’m not contradicting myself: a foolish woman with a heart and no brains is as bad as one with brains and no heart. Old but true. I’m the fool with the heart and no brain, you’re the other way round; we’re both miserable and we both suffer.”

On Honesty:
“The main thing is that my life has already changed utterly. I left a lot behind there, a very great deal. It’s all disappeared. As I sat in the railway carriage, I thought: “Now I’m on my way to be among people. Perhaps I don’t know very much, but a new life has begun.” I resolved to conduct myself honestly and firmly. I might be bored and miserable among people, but my first decision was to be polite and open with everyone; no one could ask more of me than that. Perhaps they would look on me as a child here as well – let them! Everybody regards me as an idiot for some reason...”

On the impact one can have on other's lives:
"How can you know what seed may have been dropped into his soul forever by the “little old general” he still hadn’t forgotten after twenty years? How can you know, Bakhmutov, what significance this contact between one personality and another can have in the destiny of that other?...We have here a man’s entire life and the countless ramifications which are hidden from us. ... Scattering your seed, in offering charity, in performing your good deed in whatever fashion it may be, you give away part of your personality and take in part of another’s, there is a mutual communion, and with a little more attention you will be rewarded by knowledge, the most unexpected discoveries. ... all your thoughts, all the seeds you have broadcast, perhaps already forgotten, will take root and flourish; he who received it from you will pass it on to another. And how do you know what part you will play in the resolution of the destinies of mankind?"

On Happiness and the love of life:
"What does it matter if there’s a bottomless pit of backward and wicked people for every one progressive man? That’s the reason I am so happy now – I’m convinced now that it isn’t a bottomless pit at all, it’s all living material! There’s no need to be embarrassed if we’re absurd, is there? It’s a fact that we are absurd, light-minded, addicted to bad habits, we’re bored, we don’t know how to look at or understand anything, we’re all like that, aren’t we, all of us, you, I and everyone else! ... Ah, what are my grief and misfortune to me, if I have the capacity to be happy? Do you know, I can’t understand how one can pass a tree and not be happy at seeing it! Talk to a man and not be happy at loving him! Oh, it’s just that I can’t find the words...and so many beautiful things at every step that even the most desperate man finds beautiful! Look at a child, look at God’s dawn, look at the grass growing, look into the eyes that look at you and love you...”

Also the flipside:
“I couldn’t bear those people bustling and peeping about, eternally anxious, glum, and fearful, scurrying about me on the pavements. Why their everlasting misery, why the eternal anxiety and bustle; their everlasting glum nastiness (because they are nasty, nasty and spiteful)? Whose fault is it if they are unhappy and incapable of living, though they each have sixty years of life ahead of them? ... If he’s alive, everything must be in his power! Whose fault is it that he doesn’t understand that? ... What matters is life, life alone, the continuous and infinite process of discovering it, not the discovery itself!”

On Loneliness:
"In front of him was the brilliant sky, with the lake below and the bright and limitless horizon all around him, seeming to go on forever. He gazed for a long time, tormented by his emotions. He now remembered stretching his arms out to that bright, endless blue, and weeping. What was tormenting him was that he was completely alien to all this. What was this feast, what was this permanent grand festival, which had no end, to which he had for long been drawn, always – ever since childhood, but could not join. Every morning the same bright sun came up; every morning there was a rainbow on the waterfall; every evening the highest snow-capped mountain, far off at the sky’s rim, glowed with purple flame; every ‘tiny fly’ buzzing near him in the hot sunlight was a participant in that chorus: it knew its place, loved it, and was happy; every blade of grass grew and was happy! Everything had its own path and everything knew its own path, and went forth with a song and returned with a song; he alone knew nothing and comprehended nothing, not people, not sounds, he was alien to everything, an outcast."

On Love of fellow man:
“Is it possible to love everyone, all people, all one’s neighbors? I’ve often put that question to myself. Of course not, it’s unnatural even. The abstract love of humanity almost always comes down to loving oneself alone.”

On old age:
"Firstly, she was a woman, a fellow creature, or human being as they put it nowadays; she’d lived, lived a long time, and finally reached her span. At one time she’d had children, a husband, household, relatives, all that bubbling around her, so to speak, all the laughter, so to speak, then all of a sudden, complete blank, everything vanished and her left alone, like...a kind of fly, bearing some immemorial curse. And so, at length, God brought her to her end."

On Originality:
"Everywhere, throughout the world, lack of originality has always been looked on since time immemorial as the outstanding quality and highest recommendation of a sensible, businesslike, and practical man, and ninety-nine percent of men (at the very least) have always held this opinion, with only one percent regarding the matter differently, then as now. ... What loving mother, for example, would not be dismayed and sick with fright if her son or daughter should deviate a fraction from the rails: “No, better if he’s happy and has a comfortable life, and no originality”, is what every mother thinks as she rocks her infant. ... In actual fact, the only person among us who could not become a general is the original man, in other words, the restless man. ... a certain dullness of mind seems to be an almost essential qualification, if not for every public servant, then at least for anyone seriously intent on making money."

On Religion:
"Well sir”, she said, “just as a mother rejoices when she notices her baby smile for the first time, so does God rejoice every time he beholds from on high a sinner kneeling before him, praying with all his heart.” This was what a simple peasant woman told me, in practically those words – a thought so profound, so subtle, so truly religious, comprehending the whole essence of Christianity, that is, the whole concept of God as our Father and of God rejoicing in man, like a father rejoicing in his child – the fundamental idea of Christ! ... the essence of religious feeling has nothing to do with reasoning, or transgressions, or crimes, or atheism; it is something quite different and always will be, it is something our atheists will gloss over and avoid discussing. The important thing, though, is that you will find it most quickly and clearly in a Russian heart, that’s my conclusion!”

On Virtue:
"Compassion would instruct even Rogozhin and lend purpose to his existence. Compassion was the most important, perhaps the sole law of human existence."

On the "younger generation":
“There are awfully few decent people hereabouts, there’s really no one you can respect unreservedly. You can’t help looking down on them, and yet they all insist on respect; Varya most of all. And have you noticed, Prince, how everybody’s on the make these days! Here, I mean, in Russia, in this beloved country of ours.” ( )

can't wait to get down to some simple Dostoyevsky after all the ridiculously complex crap I read. I've only ever read C&P and Notes from the Underground, and the plot to this one sounds cool. Nietzsche's love of D sort of prompted me to buy this.

This is easily my favorite of the Dostoevsky I have read.
The prince seems to be a willingly vulnerable character amid a hard selfish world. For some reason, a brief episode with two unpleasantly nationalist Poles sticks in my mind. ( )

I liked this translation. If you "can't read" Dostoevsky, this is the one for you. ( )