What?' He cried, darting at him a look of fury: 'Dare you still implore the Eternal's mercy? Would you feign penitence, and again act an Hypocrite's part? Villain, resign your hopes of pardon. Thus I secure my prey!'As He said this, darting his talons into the Monk's shaven crown, He sprang with him from the rock. The Caves and mountains rang with Ambrosio's shrieks. The Daemon continued to soar aloft, till reaching a dreadful height, He released the sufferer. Headlong fell the Monk through the airy waste; The sharp point of a rock received him; and He rolled from precipice to precipice, till bruised and mangled He rested on the river's banks. Life still existed in his miserable frame: He attempted in vain to raise himself; His broken and dislocated limbs refused to perform their office, nor was He able to quit the spot where He had first fallen. The Sun now rose above the horizon; Its scorching beams darted full upon the head of the expiring Sinner. Myriads of insects were called forth by the warmth; They drank the blood which trickled from Ambrosio's wounds; He had no power to drive them from him, and they fastened upon his sores, darted their stings into his body, covered him with their multitudes, and inflicted on him tortures the most exquisite and insupportable. The Eagles of the rock tore his flesh piecemeal, and dug out his eyeballs with their crooked beaks. A burning thirst tormented him; He heard the river's murmur as it rolled beside him, but strove in vain to drag himself towards the sound. Blind, maimed, helpless, and despairing, venting his rage in blasphemy and curses, execrating his existence, yet dreading the arrival of death destined to yield him up to greater torments, six miserable days did the Villain languish. On the Seventh a violent storm arose: The winds in fury rent up rocks and forests: The sky was now black with clouds, now sheeted with fire: The rain fell in torrents; It swelled the stream; The waves overflowed their banks; They reached the spot where Ambrosio lay, and when they abated carried with them into the river the Corse of the despairing Monk.
There are people who thirst for blood like tigers. Any man who has once tasted this unlimited power over the blood, over the body and spirit of a human creature like himself, a creature created in the same image and subject to the same law of Christ; any man who has tasted this power, this boundless opportunity to humiliate most bitterly another being made in the image of God _ becomes the servant instead of the master of his own emotions. Tyranny is a habit. It can and does eventually develop into a disease. I believe that the best of men may grow coarse, degrade to the level of a beast by sheer force of habit. Blood and power intoxicate one, they develop callousness and lust. The greatest perversions grow finally acceptable and even delicious to mind and heart. The man and the citizen perish in the tyrant for ever and the return to human dignity, remorse and spiritual rebirth becomes scarcely possible to him. Besides, the example and mere possibility of arbitrary power are contagious; they are indeed a great temptation. A society which regards such things calmly is already corrupt at the roots.
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There are people who thirst for blood like tigers. Any man who has once tasted this unlimited power over the blood, over the body and spirit of a human creature like himself, a creature created in the same image and subject to the same law of Christ; any man who has tasted this power, this boundless opportunity to humiliate most bitterly another being made in the image of God _ becomes the servant instead of the master of his own emotions. Tyranny is a habit. It can and does eventually develop into a disease. I believe that the best of men may grow coarse, degrade to the level of a beast by sheer force of habit. Blood and power intoxicate one, they develop callousness and lust. The greatest perversions grow finally acceptable and even delicious to mind and heart. The man and the citizen perish in the tyrant for ever and the return to human dignity, remorse and spiritual rebirth becomes scarcely possible to him. Besides, the example and mere possibility of arbitrary power are contagious; they are indeed a great temptation. A society which regards such things calmly is already corrupt at the roots.
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My Dear Friend,You do not know me, but I know you. Since you first breathed in this world, I have watched you. The hopes you have wished, the worries you have feared, the sins you have committed__ know them all. I am The Observer, The Recorder. I am also The Punisher. The time has come for your punishment. Listen closely, the hourglass runs low.
I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness _ a real thorough-going illness. For man__ everyday needs, it would have been quite enough to have the ordinary human consciousness, that is, half or a quarter of the amount which falls to the lot of a cultivated man of our unhappy nineteenth century.
Therefore, in my incontrovertible capacity as plaintiff and defendant judge and accused, I condemn this nature, which has so brazenly and unceremoniously inflicted this suffering_ since I am unable to destroy Nature, I am destroying myself, solely out of weariness of having to endure a tyranny in which there is no guilty party.
All we Karamazovs are such insects. And angel as you are, that insect lives in you, too, and will stir up a tempest in your blood. Tempests, because sensual lust is a tempest - worse than a tempest! Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed, for God sets before us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side. I am not an educated nor cultured man, Alyosha, but I've thought a lot about this. It's terrible what mysteries there are! Too many riddles weigh men down on earth. We must solve as we can, and try to keep a dry skin in the water. Beauty! I can't bear the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom. What's still more awful is that a man with the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal of the Madonna, and his heart may be on fire with that ideal, genuinely on fire, just as in his days of youth and innocence. Yes, man is broad, too broad. I'd have him narrower. The devil only knows what to make of it! What to the mind is shameful is beauty and nothing else to the heart. Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in Sodom. Did you know that secret? The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.
They were still all beautiful and there was still enchantment and wonder, but she had crossed a line and now the fairy tale was green with corruption and evil.