Book: The fifth character

Why do people of all times and peoples need miracles that defy all everyday firmly established facts? Or maybe lust wonderful rooted in certain innate, not verifiable knowledge, deep confidence that the miraculous is an essential, integral aspect of reality? Or Vice versa - this very craving gives rise to miracles?

In General, we treat the devil absolutely ugly, and the worse we treat it, the louder he's laughing at us.

Everyone wants Christ to your taste.

Can you imagine what it's like to be a hobo? Vagrants - gone people, and no one understands, almost no one. I have heard and read all sorts of nonsense about them the intolerable shackles of civilization, and they want to breathe the air of freedom, and that many of them are educated people with great principles, and that they are funny people who spend their whole lives in hard labor - the very people from whom they beg alms, and all this nonsense, nonsense, from beginning to end. There's all the more crazy, the criminals, the geeks, and homelessness makes them worse, and all this from a life outdoors. Well, Yes, of course, if you have food and there's shelter, under which you can return, then the fresh air is a great thing, but if you have nothing, it makes you mad to rage; hunger and oxygen - an explosive mixture for someone who is not accustomed to it from childhood, like, say, savages. And these people are not savages. Weaklings for the most part, but weaklings evil.

Perhaps blame my boredom. Boredom, like the army, I have not experienced neither before nor after, it is heavy with lead poured every cell of my body. Boredom usually associated with idleness, but there was a completely different case, because the infantry, undergoing military training, no rest from morning to late evening, and then sleeps like the dead. The boredom of which I speak, gave rise to isolation from all that embellishes life, or arouses curiosity, or extends the horizons of perception. It was the tedium of performing endless tasks, nothing giving any mind or heart, boredom is the acquisition of skills without which you would cost. I learned to March in step and turn on the team, learned to shoot and keep yourself neat (by army standards), in particular - to fill the bed, clean boots, bright buttons to kick and cheat their legs in long strips of thick, dung-colored fabrics and put the only way. I learned how to do all this, and even to do well, although not seen that much use.

Hearing the flattery in his address, many people try immediately to show themselves and others their practicality and rationality, in order to hide the sad fact that they took the bait.

The hospital smelt of disinfectant and despair; it is hard to define, but unmistakable smell invariably dominates in prisons, courts and lunatic asylums.

Compassion, it messes with the brain faster than any whiskey.

... Colleagues looked at me like cows at a passing train, and went back to talking about Golf.

I loved to know, and not to run your mouth about what you know...

... sometimes I passionately wanted my mother loved me, and hated himself for causing her grief, but no less came to the realization that her love does cost me disproportionately expensive, and her view of what a "good son", very primitive.

I was full of cold contempt, but simply put - jealous, but it is clear to me now, I sincerely took his envy for philosophical omotenashi.

I tried to approach the problem, not dulling your view of either the pink glasses of faith or the green spectacles of science.

The devil knows such nooks and crannies of our souls, for which Christ himself dwells in the dark.