Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky
“to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.”
“An angel in heaven I've told already; but I want to tell an angel on earth.”
“Above all, avoid lying, especially lying to yourself. Keep watching out for your lies, watch for them every hour, every minute. Also avoid disgust, both for others and yourself: whatever strikes you as disgusting within yourself is cleansed by the mere fact that you notice it. Avoid fear, too, although fear is really only a consequence of lies. Never be afraid of your petty selfishness when you try to achieve love and don’t be too alarmed if you act badly on occasion.”
“Tell me yourself directly, I challenge you – reply: imagine that you yourself are erecting the edifice of human fortune with the goal of, at the finale, making people happy, of at last giving them peace and quiet, but that in order to do it would be necessary and unavoidable to torture to death only one little creature, that same little child that beat its little fist, and on its unavenged tears to found that edifice, would you agree to be the architect on those conditions, tell me and tell me truly?”
topics: inspirational-philosophical
“ولكن كيف يكون هذا الإنسان فاضلاً بدون الله ؟. إلى من سيندفع..”
“while I don’t agree or care for what you are saying, I do support your right to say it, for herein lies true freedom’.”
“You magnify your failure to a crime, Vasya.”
“N’importe ! elle n’était pas heureuse, ne l’avait jamais été. D’où venait donc cette insuffisance de la vie, cette pourriture instantanée des choses où elle s’appuyait ?… Mais, s’il y avait quelque part un être fort et beau, une nature valeureuse, pleine à la fois d’exaltation et de raffinements, un coeur de poète sous une forme d’ange, lyre aux cordes d’airain, sonnant vers le ciel des épithalames élégiaques, pourquoi, par hasard, ne le trouveraitelle pas ? Oh ! quelle impossibilité ! Rien, d’ailleurs, ne valait la peine d’une recherche ; tout mentait ! Chaque sourire cachait un bâillement d’ennui, chaque joie une malédiction, tout plaisir son dégoût, et les meilleurs baisers ne vous laissaient sur la lèvre qu’une irréalisable envie d’une volupté plus haute.”
“Without a firm idea of himself and the purpose of his life, man cannot live, and would sooner destroy himself than remain on earth, even if he was surrounded by bread.”
“What a book the Bible is, what a miracle, what strength is given with it to man. It s like a mould cast of the world and man and human nature, everything is there, and a law for everything for all the ages. And what mysteries are solved and revealed”
topics: the-bible
“He is guilty, but he will be acquitted, from motives of humanity, in accordance with the new ideas, the new sentiments that had come into fashion,”
“And so the liberal tendency became a habit with Stepan Arkadyich, and he liked his newspaper, as he liked a cigar after dinner, for the slight haze it produced in his head.”
“…Ëndërrimtari, po t’i bëjmë një përkufizim të hollësishëm, nuk është njeri, por, si me thënë, një krijesë e gjinisë së mesme. Gjallon të shumtën e kohës në ndonjë kënd të humbur, a thua se i fshihet edhe dritës së diellit dhe, me t’u mbyllur në shtëpinë e tij ngjitet pas saj si kërmilli pas guackës, ose së paku i ngjan shumë, në këtë drejtim, asaj kafshës interesante që është kafshë dhe shtëpi njëherësh dhe që quhet breshkë…”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from White Nights
“If God thought it necessary to offer rewards for love, your God must be immoral.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Demons
“Once I am rich, I shall be a genius, an extremely original man. One of the vilest and most hateful things connected with money is that it can buy even talent; and will do so as long as the world lasts.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from The Idiot
“Moje słowa nie odpowiadają moim myślom, a to poniża moje myśli.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from The Idiot
“Whether he was acting ill or well he did not know, and far from laying down the law about it, he now avoided talking or thinking about it. Thinking about it led him into doubts and prevented him from seeing what he should and should not do. But when he did not think, but just lived, he unceasingly felt in his soul the presence of an infallible judge deciding which of two actions was the better and which the worse; and as soon as he did what he should not have done he immediately felt this. In this way he lived, not knowing or seeing any possibility of knowing what he was or why he lived in the world.”
“He looked at her, and the fury expressed in her face alarmed and amazed him. He did not understand how his pity for her exasperated her. She saw in him sympathy for her, but not love.”
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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.