“The general never regretted his early marriage, or regarded it as a foolish youthful escapade; and he so respected and feared his wife that he was very near loving her.”

“It was impossible to tell at first sight whether he loved his meek, obedient wife, Marfa. But he really did lover her, and she knew it.”

“He noticed that Ivan swayed as he walked and that his right shoulder was lower than his left. He had never noticed it before.”

“But instead of delight his soul was filled with such gloom, and his heart ached with such anguish, as he had never known in his life before... "I am base" he whispered to himself.”

“Oh! in his rapture he was weeping even over those stars, which were shining to him from the abyss of space, and "he was not ashamed of that ecstasy." There seemed to be threads from all those innumerable worlds of God, linking his soul to them, and it was trembling all over "in contact with other worlds." He longed to forgive everyone and for everything, and to beg forgiveness. Oh, not for himself, but for all men, for all and for everything. "And others are praying for me too," echoed again in his soul. But with every instant he felt clearly and, as it were, tangibly, that something firm and unshakable as that vault of heaven had entered into his soul. It was as though some idea had seized the sovereignty of his mind -- and it was for all his life and for ever and ever. He had fallen on the earth a weak boy, but he rose up a resolute champion, and he knew and felt it suddenly at the very moment of his ecstasy. And never, never, his life long, could Alyosha forget that minute.”

“why had he happened to hear such a discussion and such ideas at the very moment when his own brain was just conceiving … the very same ideas? And why, just at the moment when he had brought away the embryo of his idea from the old woman had he dropped at once upon a conversation about her? This coincidence always seemed strange to him. This trivial talk in a tavern had an immense influence on him in his later action; as though there had really been in it something preordained, some guiding hint…”

“And even if one tried, it would be very hard to give a true account, for there were no thoughts in Ivan's mind but something very vague. He felt that he had lost his bearings.”