6 Quotes by Joseph Frank

The most unbearable misfortune is when you yourself become unjust, malignant, vile; you realize it, you even reproach yourself – but you just can’t help it.

If it was his mother who had given birth to him in the flesh, it was Pushkin who had given birth to him in the world of the spirit.

The suffering of the world, the mystery of the universe, the impulse towards the sublime in love and heroism, the grief and despair over a dreamt of but unattainable beatitude, the hamlet-like visits to cemeteries, the romantic parlour, romantic beards, and romantic haircuts-all these and similar things gave evidence of restive spirits. It was expected and feared that they would join conspiratorial sects and rise with arms in their hand the moment they had the chance.

For the young man from Moscow whose head was filled with thoughts of the beautiful and sublime, the moral mediocrity of his comrade came as a withering disillusionment. And if he had been out raged by the incident of the government courier, one can well imagine his horror of the savagery of the upper classes toward all those to whom they stood in a position of authority.

Rise, prophet, rise, and hear, and see, And let my words be seen and heard By all who turn aside from me. And burn them with my fiery word.

On Tolstoy vs. Dostoyevsky: Tolstoy depicted the life “which existed in the stable Moscow landowners’ family of the middle-upper stratum.” Such a life was the life of the exceptions. The life of the majority on the other hand, was one of confusion and moral chaos. Dostoevsky’s work was an attempt to grapple with the chaos of the present, while Tolstoy’s were pious efforts to enshrine for posterity the beauty of a gentry life already vanishing and doomed to extinction.