“I tell you, sir, it's very easy for Pyotr Stepanovich to live in the world, because he imagines a man and then lives with him the way he imagined him.”

“Sometimes I imagine that it was I that crucified him. He hanging there moaning, and I sit down facing him,eating pineapple compote. I like pineapple compote very much. Do u?”

“Each man cannot judge except by himself," he said, blushing. "There will be entire freedom when it makes no difference whether one lives or does not live. That is the goal to everything.""The goal? But then perhaps no one will even want to live?""No one," he said resolutely."Man is afraid of death because he loves life, that's how I understand it," I observed, "and that is what nature tells us.""That is base, that is the whole deceit!" his eyes began to flash. "Life is pain, life is fear, and man is unhappy. Now all is pain and fear. Now man loves life because he loves pain and fear. That's how they've made it. Life now is given in exchange for pain and fear, and that is the whole deceit. Man now is not yet the right man. There will be a new man, happy and proud. He for whom it will make no difference whether he lives or does not live, he will be the new man. He who overcomes pain and fear will himself be God. And this God will not be.”

“Where was it that I read about a man condemned to death saying or thinking, an hour before his death, that if he had to live somewhere high up on a cliffside, on a ledge so narrow that there was room only for his two feet - and with the abyss, the ocean, eternal darkness, eternal solitude, eternal storm all around him - and had to stay like that, on a square foot of space, an entire lifetime, a thousand years, an eternity - it would be better to live so than die right now! Only to live, to live, to live! To live, no matter how - only to live! ...How true! Lord, how true! Man is a scoundrel! And he's a scoundrel who calls him a scoundrel for that.”

“Go and tell," I whispered to him. There was little voice left in me, but I whispered it firmly. Then I took the Gospel from the table, the Russian translation, and showed him John, chapter 12, verse 24:"Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." I had read this verse just before he came.He read it."True," he said, and smiled bitterly. "Yes, in these books," he said, after a pause, one finds all sorts of terrible things. It is easy to shove them under someone's nose. Who wrote them, were they human beings?""The Holy Spirit wrote them," I said."Its easy for you to babble," he smiled again, but this time almost hatefully. I again took the book, opened it to a different place, and showed him the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 10, verse 31. He read: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."He read it and threw the book aside. He even began trembling all over."A fearful verse," he said. "You picked a good one, I must say.”

“No, I can't admit it. Brother,' said Alyosha suddenly, with flashing eyes, 'you said just now, is there a being in the whole world who would have the right to forgive and could firgive? But there is a Being and He can forgive everything, all and for all, because He gave His innocent blood for all and everything. You have forgotten Him, and on Him is built the edifice, and it is to Him they cry aloud, "Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed!”

“I remember once I came into his room alone, when no one was with him. It was a bright evening, the sun was setting and lit up the whole room with its slanting rays. He beckoned when he saw me, I went over to him, he took me by the shoulders with both hands, looked tenderly, lovingly into my face; he did not say anything, he simply looked at me like that for about a minute: "Well," he said, "go now, play, live for me!" I walked out then and went to play.”