“Pass us by, and forgive us our happiness”

“In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us.”

“Love children especially, for they too are sinless like the angels; they live to soften and purify our hearts and, as it were, to guide us.”

“Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”

“Know, then, that now, precisely now, these people are more certain than ever before that they are completely free, and at the same time they themselves have brought us their freedom and obediently laid it at our feet. It is our doing, but is it what you wanted? This sort of freedom?'Again I don't understand', Alyosha interrupted, 'Is he being ironic? Is he laughing?'Not in the least. He precisely lays it to his and his colleagues' credit that they have finally overcome freedom, and have done so in order to make people happy.”

“Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being.”

“There is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and useful for later years than some good memory, especially a menory connected with childhood, with home. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if we have only one good memory left in our hearts..even that may sometime be the means of saving us.”