Sublime

But you’ve ceased to believe in your theory already, what will you run away with? And what would you do in hiding? It would be hateful and difficult for you, and what you need more than anything in life is a definite position, an atmosphere to suit you. And what sort of atmosphere would you have? If you ran away, you’d come back to yourself. You ca

Dostoyevsky doesn't intend to suggest the narrator is justified and correct in his cynicism and misery; he merely seems to point out that at least considering despair as a sane option to a harsh world is as healthy as any other option.

“Feed them first, then ask virtue of them!”—that

Here the devil is struggling with God, and the battlefield is the human heart.

“Do not be afraid of anything, never be afraid, and do not grieve. Just let repentance not slacken in you, and God will forgive everything. There is not and cannot be in the whole world such a sin that the Lord will not forgive one who truly repents of it. A man even cannot commit so great a sin as would exhaust God’s boundless love.

“You weren’t quite joking, that is true. This idea is not yet resolved in your heart and torments it. But a martyr, too, sometimes likes to toy with his despair, also from despair, as it were. For the time being you, too, are toying, out of despair, with your magazine articles and drawing-room discussions, without believing in your own dialectics a

And what cowards they all are here, about having an opinion of their own,

He’s one of those who don’t need millions, but need to resolve their thought.”