Book III

if I’m without faith and you have so great a faith that you are continually swearing at me, you try yourself telling this mountain, not to move into the sea for that’s a long way off, but even to our stinking little river which runs at the bottom of the garden. You’ll see for yourself that it won’t budge, but will remain just where it is however much you shout at it, and that shows, Grigory Vassilyevitch, that you haven’t faith in the proper manner, and only abuse others about it. Again, taking into consideration that no one in our day, not only you, but actually no one, from the highest person to the lowest peasant, can shove mountains into the sea⁠—except perhaps some one man in the world, or, at most, two, and they most likely are saving their souls in secret somewhere in the Egyptian desert, so you wouldn’t find them⁠—if so it be, if all the rest have no faith, will God curse all the rest? that is, the population of the whole earth, except about two hermits in the desert, and in His well-known mercy will He not forgive one of them? And so I’m persuaded that though I may once have doubted I shall be forgiven if I shed tears of repentance.”