"i want retribution, otherwise i shall destroy myself."

archiving good lines from books i read for my own personal reference title from the brothers karamazov, dostoevsky (tr. mcduff)

[karamazovapologist]

A life that is surging, reborn, a multitude of people and experiences, the capacity for renewal and [propulsion]

Albert Camus, The First Man (Notes and Sketches, p. 297)

[karamazovapologist]

—the longing, yes, to live, to live still more, to immerse himself in the greatest warmth this earth could give him,

Albert Camus, The First Man (p. 282)

[karamazovapologist]

with his youthful blood boiling, a ravenous appetite for life, an untamed and hungry intellect, and all the while an ecstasy of joy punctuated by the sudden counterpunches inflicted by a world anknown to him, leaving him abashed at the time, but he would quickly recover, trying to understand, to learn, to assimilate this world he did not know, and he did assimilate it, because he seized upon it so avidly, not trying to worm his way in; he was willing to go along but would not abase himself, and finally he was never without a sure confidence, yes a certainty, since he was guaranteed that he would achieve everything he desired and nothing would ever be impossible for him, nothing that is of this world and only of this world; he was preparing himself (and was prepared also by the bareness of his childhood) to find his place anywhere, because there was no position he wanted, but only joy, and free spirits, and energy, and all that life has that is good, that is mysterious, that is not and never will be for sale.

Albert Camus, The First Man (p. 277-278)

[karamazovapologist]

and the thunder of the music that exploded now chilled him, filled him with dread and with an extraordinary exaltation where for the first time he could feel his strength, his boundless ability to prevail and to live,

Albert Camus, The First Man (p. 172)

[karamazovapologist]

The child stared at him, without a tear (and for all his life it would be kindness and love that made him cry, never pain or persecution, which on the contrary only reinforced his spirit and his resolution),

Albert Camus, The First Man (p. 170)

[karamazovapologist]

"There is a terrible emptiness in me, an indifference that hurts..."

Albert Camus, The First Man (p. 36)

[karamazovapologist]

"Yes, you love life. You have to, since that's all you believe in." Malan seated himself heavily in a cretonne-covered easy chair, and suddenly a look of inexpressible melancholy came over his face.

"You're right,' said Cormery. "I've loved life, I'm hungry for it. At the same time, life seems horrible to me, it seems inaccessible. That is why I am a believer, out of skepticism. Yes, I want to believe, I want to live, forever." Cormery fell silent.

"At sixty-five, every year is a stay of execution," Malan said. "I would like to die in peace, and dying frightens me. I have accomplished nothing."

"There are people who vindicate the world, who help others live just by their presence."

Albert Camus, The First Man (p. 35)

[karamazovapologist]

"All right, I'm embarrassing you. You don't like people to speak too openly. I just wanted to tell you that with all your faults I love you. I love or revere very few people. As for the rest, I'm ashamed of my indifference to them. But for those I love, nothing and no one, neither I nor certainly they themselves, can ever make me stop loving them. It took me a long time to learn that now I know it."

Albert Camus, The First Man (p. 34)

[karamazovapologist]

But for someone like him, who has nothing and wants the world entire, all his energy is not enough to create himself and to conquer or to understand that world.

Albert Camus, The First Man (p. 27-28)

[karamazovapologist]

All that was left was this was anguished heart, eager to live, rebelling against the deadly order of the world that had been with him for forty years, and still struggling against the wall that separated him from the secret of all life, wanting to go farther, to go beyond, and to discover, discover before dying, discover at last in order to be, just once to be, for a single second, but forever.

Albert Camus, The First Man (p. 26-27)

[karamazovapologist]

'What if I were not to die! What if life were given back to me—what infinity! And it would all be mine! Then I'd turn each minute into a whole age, I'd lose nothing, I'd reckon up every minute separately, I'd let nothing be wasted!'

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot (tr. Pevear & Volokhonsky, p. 61)

[karamazovapologist]

Said I have a queer mind and have read too much. Not true. Have read little and understood less.

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (p. 271)

[karamazovapologist]

—Look here, Cranly, he said. You have asked me what I would do and what I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile, and cunning. [...]

—You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too.

James Joyce (Stephen Dedalus), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (p. 268-269)

[karamazovapologist]

His soul had arisen from the grave of boyhood, spurning her graveclothes. Yes! Yes! Yes! He would create proudly out of the freedom and power of his soul, as the great artificer whose name he bore, a living thing, new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable.

He started up nervously from the stoneblock for he could no longer quench the flame in his blood. He felt his cheeks aflame and his throat throbbing with song. There was a lust of wandering in his feet that burned to set out for the ends of the earth. On! On! his heart seemed to cry. Evening would deepen above the sea, night fall upon the plains, dawn glimmer before the wanderer and show him strange fields and hills and faces. Where?

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (p. 184)

[karamazovapologist]

His very brain was sick and powerless. He could scarcely interpret the letters of the signboards of the shops. By his monstrous way of life he seemed to have put himself beyond the limits of reality. Nothing moved him or spoke to him from the real world unless he heard in it an echo of the infuriated cries within him. He could respond to no earthly or human appeal, dumb and insensible to the call of summer and gladness and companionship, wearied and dejected by his father's voice. He could scarcely recognise as his his own thoughts,

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (p. 98)

[karamazovapologist]

There had been no mass for the dead in the chapel and no procession. He had not died but he had faded out like a film in the sun. He had been lost or had wandered out of existence for he no longer existed. How strange to think of him passing out of existence in such a way, not by death but by fading out in the sun or by being lost and forgotten somewhere in the universe!

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (p. 99)

[karamazovapologist]

"The space occupied by my body is small indeed compared with the surrounding immensity in which it has neither part nor lot, and the portion of time allotted to me here on earth is insignificant indeed compared with the eternity which I have never known, and shall never enter! Yet in this same atom, in this same mathematical point which I call my body, the blood circulates, and the brain operates at will. A fine discrepancy for you—a fine futility!"

"I would remark that what you have just said applies to every human being in creation."

"True. What I mean is that my parents know not a single tedious moment, nor are in the least distressed with the thought of their insignificance—it is a thought which never stinks in their nostrils; whereas /I/—well, I feel nothing but weariness and rancour in my breast."

Ivan S. Turgenev (Evgenii Bazarov, Arkady Kirsanov), Fathers and Sons (p. 124)