Demons

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Alternate Cover Edition ISBN 06797345110679734511. (ISBN13: 9780679734512)

Inspired by the true story of a political murder that horrified Russians in 1869, Fyodor Dostoevsky conceived of Demons as a "novel-pamphlet" in which he would say everything about the plague of materialist ideology that he saw infecting his native land. What emerged was a prophetic and ferociously funny masterpiece of ideology and murder in pre-revolutionary Russia.

BUY NOW

Paperback, 733 pages

Published August 1st 1995 by Vintage (first published 1872)

tags: novels, cultural, politics, classics, literature, classic literature, 19th century, philosophy, russia, russian literature, fiction

Book Quotes

“You don't say prayers yourself?" "I pray to everything. You see the spider crawling on the wall, I look at it and thank it for crawling.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“zgodzę się z tym, że moje ówczesne podrażnienie było płytkie i niemądre; lecz wzajemne niedomówienia niezwykle nieraz szkodzą prawdziwej przyjaźni”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“In the stone there is no pain, but in the fear of the stone is the pain.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Be careful of revealing anything to me, if it's the truth.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“cała wasza przyjaźń to wzajemne wylewanie brudnej wody”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I maintain that Shakespeare and Raphael are more precious than the emancipation of the serfs, more precious than Nationalism, more precious than Socialism, more precious than the young generation, more precious than chemistry, more precious than almost all humanity because they are the fruit, the real fruit of all humanity and perhaps the highest fruit that can be. A form of beauty already attained, but for the attaining of which I would not perhaps consent to live....”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“all these talented gentlemen of the middling sort who are sometimes in their lifetime accepted almost as geniuses, pass out of memory quite suddenly and without a trace when they die, and what's more, it often happens that even during their lifetime, as soon as a new generation grows up and takes the place of the one in which they have flourished, they are forgotten and neglected by every one in an incredibly short time.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“— Я уже вам говорил: мы проникнем в самый народ. Знаете ли, что мы уж и теперь ужасно сильны? Наши не те только, которые режут и жгут, да делают классические выстрелы или кусаются. Такие только мешают. Я без дисциплины ничего не понимаю. Я ведь мошенник, а не социалист, ха-ха! Слушайте, я их всех сосчитал: учитель, смеющийся с детьми над их Богом и над их колыбелью, уже наш. Адвокат, защищающий образованного убийцу тем, что он развитее своих жертв и, чтобы денег добыть, не мог не убить, уже наш. Школьники, убивающие мужика, чтоб испытать ощущение, наши. Присяжные, оправдывающие преступников сплошь, наши. Прокурор, трепещущий в суде, что он недостаточно либерален, наш, наш. Администраторы, литераторы, о, наших много, ужасно много, и сами того не знают! С другой стороны, послушание школьников и дурачков достигло высшей черты; у наставников раздавлен пузырь с желчью; везде”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Nie ma rzeczy nieznośniejszej, gdy spadnie na człowieka nieszczęście, a przyjaciele zaczynają mu wypominać, że palnął głupstwo.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“przecież ze mnie bezmyślne dziecko, z całym egoizmem dziecka, lecz bez jego niewinności.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Trzeba przyznać, że umiał przywiązać do siebie pupila. Cały sekret polegał na tym, że Stiepan też właściwie był dzieckiem.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Not one people has ever yet organised itself according to the principles of science and reason. Never has there been a single example of that, except only for a brief moment, out of stupidity.... Reason and science in the life of peoples always, now and from the beginning of time, have fulfilled merely a secondary and auxiliary function; and that will be their function until the end of time. Peoples are formed and moved by another force that rules and dominates them, but whose origin is unknown and inexplicable. This force is the force of an unquenchable desire to go on to the end, while at the same time denying the end. This is the force of a ceaseless and tireless affirmation of its own being and the denial of death. It is the spirit of life, as the Scriptures say, "of living water", the drying up of which is threatened in the Apocalypse. It is the aesthetic principle, as the philosophers say, the moral principle, as they also identify it. "The search for God", as I call it more simply.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“the real God to you many a time, the maker and creator, and about the creation of the world, along with what’s fated in the future and the transformation of every creature and every beast from the book of the Apocalypse. But”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“nadstawił twarz do pocałunku, charakterystycznym zwyczajem wszystkich Rosjan, którzy są już dostatecznie sławni.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“El primer plano lo ocupaban Piotr Stepanovich, la sociedad secreta, la organización y la red. A la pregunta de por qué se habían cometido tantos asesinatos, escándalos y ultrajes, contestó con presteza febril: «para quebrantar sistemáticamente los cimientos de la sociedad y los principios que la rigen, para acobardar a todo el mundo y sembrar por todos lados la confusión, de tal suerte que cuando la sociedad (enferma, abatida, cínica e incrédula, pero con ansia infinita de una idea rectora y con instinto de conservación) esté a punto de desencuadernarse, hacerse con el poder, levantar la bandera de la insurrección con el apoyo de toda una red de quintetos que, mientras tanto, habrán estado reclutando nuevos secuaces y sondeando los puntos débiles para atacarlos mejor».”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Stepan Trofimovitch assured me on one occasion that the very highest artistic talents may exist in the most abominable blackguards, and that the one thing does not interfere with the other.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“miał minę człowieka, który dobrowolnie ofiarował się na pewną śmierć dla ojczyzny.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Odruchowo otworzył grubą książkę, która leżała na biurku. Nieraz tak wróżył z książki, otwierając na chybił trafił i odczytując na prawej stronie trzy wiersze od góry.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“In every period of transition this riff-raff, which exists in every society, rises to the surface, and is not only without any aim but has not even a symptom of an idea, and merely does its utmost to give expression to uneasiness and impatience. Moreover, this riff-raff almost always falls unconsciously under the control of the little group of “advanced people” who do act with a definite aim,”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

topics: Revolution

“Вообще говоря, если осмелюсь выразить и моё мнение в таком щекотливом деле, все эти наши господа таланты средней руки, принимаемые по обыкновению при жизни их чуть не за гениев, — не только исчезают чуть не бесследно и как-то вдруг из памяти людей, когда умирают, но случается, что даже и при жизни их, чуть лишь подрастёт новое поколение, сменяющее то, при котором они действовали, — забываются и пренебрегаются всеми непостижимо скоро.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer, essayist and philosopher, perhaps most recognized today for his novels Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov.

Dostoyevsky's literary output explores human psychology in the troubled political, social and spiritual context of 19th-century Russian society. Considered by many as a founder or precursor of 20th-century existentialism, his Notes from Underground (1864), written in the embittered voice of the anonymous "underground man", was called by Walter Kaufmann the "best overture for existentialism ever written."

His tombstone reads "Verily, Verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." from John 12:24, which is also the epigraph of his final novel, The Brothers Karamazov.
... Show more

Get Bible verse every day in your inbox

Read on Mobile

Most Searched

Today

7 Days

30 Days

Demons

BUY NOW

Book Quotes

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Group of Brands