Reason #3,928 Why Dostoevsky is Brilliant

"He [Alyosha] did not stop on the porch, either, but went quickly down the steps. Filled with rapture, his soul yearned for freedom, vastness, space. Over him the heavenly dome, full of quiet, shining stars, hung boundlessly. From the zenith to the horizon the still-dim Milky Way stretched its double strand. Night, fresh and quiet, almost unstirring, enveloped the earth. The white towards and golden domes of the church gleamed in the sapphire sky. The luxuriant autumn flowers in the flower beds near the house had fallen asleep until morning. The silence of the earth seemed to merge with the silence of the heavens, the mystery of the earth touched the mystery of the starts .... Alyhosha stood gazing and suddenly, as if he had been cut down, threw himself to the earth."

(The Brothers Karamazov)

We appreciate literature.

Dostoevsky on Education

While it isn't quite so explicitly about graduate education as I would like to think, I found this passage from The Brothers Karamazov particularly enlightening.

[Introducing Alyosha]

" . . . he was partly a young man of our time - that is, honest by nature, demanding of truth, seeking it and believing it, and in that belief demanding an immediate participation in it with all the strength of his soul; demanding an immediate deed, with an unfailing desire to sacrifice everything for this deed, even life.

Although, unfortunately, these young men do not understand that the sacrifice of life is, perhaps, the easiest of all sacrifices in many cases, while to sacrifice, five or six years of their ebulliently youthful life to hard, difficult studies, to learning, in order to increase tenfold their strength to serve the very truth and the very deed that they loved and set out to accomplish - such sacrifice is quite often almost beyond the strength of many of them."