Dostoevsky's Idiot

An old, forgotten memory awoke in his brain, and suddenly burst into clearness and light. It was a recollection of Switzerland, during the first year of his cure, the very first months. At that time he had been pretty nearly an idiot still; he could not speak properly, and had difficulty in understanding when others spoke to him.
He climbed the mountain-side, one sunny morning, and wandered long and aimlessly, his mind possessed with an agonizing but unformulated idea. Above him was the blazing sky, below, the lake; all around was the horizon, clear and infinite. He gazed a long time in distress. He remembered how he had stretched out his arms towards the beautiful, boundless blue of the horizon, and wept, and wept. What had so tormented him was the idea that he was a stranger to all this, that he was outside this glorious festival. What was this universe? What was this grand, eternal pageant to which there was no end, to which he had always, from his earliest childhood, been drawn in and in which he could never take part? Every morning the same bright sun rises; every morning the same rainbow in the waterfall; every evening the same glow on the snow-mountains, with a flush of purple against the distant sky. Every little fly that buzzed in the sun's rays was a singer in the universal chorus, "knew its place, and was happy in it." Every blade of grass grew and was happy. Everything knew its path and loved it, went forth with a song and returned with a song; only he knew nothing, understood nothing, neither men nor words, nor any of nature's voices; he was outside it all, and an outcast.

Credits: "The Idiot" pg 388; The Literature Network