Youth

I have said t that my friendship with Dimitri ope­ned up for me a new view of my life and of its aim and relations. The essence of that view lay in the con­viction that the destiny of man is to strive for mo­ral improvement, and that such improvement is at once easy, possible, and lasting. Hitherto, however, I had found pleasure only in the new ideas which I discovered to arise from that conviction, and in the forming of brilliant plans for a moral, active futu­re, while all the time my life had been continuing along its old petty, muddled, pleasure-seeking cour­se, and the same virtuous thoughts which I and my adored friend Dimitri (“my own marvellous Mitia,” as I used to call him to myself in a whisper) had been wont to exchange with one another still plea­sed my intellect, but left my sensibility untouched.

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