![]() Perhaps we will even become wicked later on, will even be unable to resist a bad action, will laugh at people’s tears, and at those who say, as Kolya exclaimed today: ‘I want to suffer for all people’ – perhaps we will scoff wickedly at such people. And even if only one good memory remains with us in our hearts, that alone may serve some day for our salvation. If a man stores up many such memories to take into life, then he is saved for his whole life. ![]() You hear a lot said about your education, yet some such beautiful, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. You must know that there is nothing higher, or stronger, or sounder, or more useful afterwards in life, than some good memory, especially the memory from childhood, from the parental home. My little doves – let me call you that – little doves, because you are very much like those pretty gray blue birds, now, at this moment, as I look at your kind, dear faces – my dear children, perhaps you will not understand what I am going to say to you, because I often speak very incomprehensibly, but still you will remember and some day agree with my words. And even though we may be involved in the most important affairs, achieve distinction or all into some great misfortune – all the same, let us never forget how good we once felt here, all together, united by such good and kind feelings as made us, too, for the time we loved the poor boy, perhaps better than we actually better than we actually are. And so, first of all, let us remember him, gentlemen, all of our lives. ![]() He was a nice boy, a kind and brave boy, he felt honor and his father’s bitter offense made him rise up. And whatever may happen to us later in life, even if we do not meet for twenty years afterwards, let us always remember how we buried the poor boy, whom we once threw stones at – remember, there by the little bridge? – and whom afterwards we all came to love so much. Let us agree here, by Ilyusha’s stone, that we will never forget – first, Ilyushechka, and second, one another. But soon I shall leave this town, perhaps for a very long time. ![]() Right now I shall be with my two brothers for a while, one of whom is going into exile, and the other is lying near death. Alyosha says these words to the other schoolboys, his friends: This speech is at the stone of Ilyusha, a dead schoolboy and friend. I am going to quote the entirety of Alyosha’s final speech in the novel. ![]()
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