Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“You do not admit the conceivability at all?' he queried. 'But why not? We admit the existence of electricity, of which we know nothing. Why should there not be some new force, still unknown to us, which...' 'When electricity was discovered,' Levin interrupted hurriedly, 'it was only the phenomenon that was discovered, and it was unknown from what it proceeded and what were its effects, and ages passed before its applications were conceived. But the spiritualists have begun with tables writing for them, and spirits appearing to them, and have only later started saying that it is an unknown force.' Vronsky listened attentively to Levin, as he always did listen, obviously interested in his words. 'Yes, but the spiritualists say we don't know at present what this force is, but there is a force, and these are the conditions in which it acts. Let the scientific men find out what the force consists in. Not, I don't see why there should not be a new force, if it...' 'Why, because with electricity,' Levin interrupted again, 'every time you rub tar against wool, a recognized phenomenon is manifested, but in this case it does not happen every time, and so it follows it is not a natural phenomenon.”

“They did not know that the quicker a fresh-water fish is on the fire after he is caught the better he is;”

“And the dog you're taking with you will be no help to you. You can't get away from yourselves.”

“There is strength to endure everything.”

“As to Emma, she did not ask herself whether she loved. Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings—a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. She did not know that on the terrace of houses it makes lakes when the pipes are choked, and she would thus have remained in her security when she suddenly discovered a rent in the wall of it.”

“He had so often heard these things said that they did not strike him as original. Emma was like all his mistresses; and the charm of novelty, gradually falling away like a garment, laid bare the eternal monotony of passion, that has always the same forms and the same language. He did not distinguish, this man of so much experience, the difference of sentiment beneath the sameness of expression. Because lips libertine and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be discounted; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars.”

“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.”

“Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out. Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.”

“He saw nothing but death or the advance towards death in everything.”

“I did not want to know whether I was loved, and I did not want to acknowledge to myself that I was not loved;”

“Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of any one. For no one can judge a criminal, until he recognises that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and that he perhaps is more than all men to blame for that crime.”

“He was very well aware that in their eyes the position of an unsuccessful lover of a girl, or of any woman free to marry, might be ridiculous. But the position of a man pursuing a married woman, and, regardless of everything, staking his life on drawing her into adultery, has something fine and grand about it, and can never be ridiculous; and so it was with a proud and gay smile under his mustaches that he lowered the opera glass and looked at his cousin. "But”

“البشر يصبحون مجانين مسعورين، ولكنهم يعدون أنفسهم على ذكاء عظيم لم يزعمه البشر لأنفسهم في يوم من الأيام قط ؛ فهم يعتقدون بأنهم معصومين من الزلل مبرّؤون من الخطأ، في أحكامهم، في نتائجهم العلمية، في مبادئهم الأخلاقية والدينية. إن قرى ومدنًا وأممًا بكاملها قد سرت إليها هذه العدوى، وفقدت عقلها. أصبح أفرادها يعيشون في حالة جنون، لا يفهم بعضهم عن بعض شيئًا، لا يفهم أحد منهم عن أحد شيئًا ؛ كل واحد يؤمن بأنه الإنسان الوحيد الذي يمتلك الحقيقة، فإذا نظر إلى الآخرين تألم وبكى ولطم صدره وعقف يديه لوعة وحسرة. أصبح الناس لا يستطيعون أن يتفاهموا على ما ينبغي أن يكون شرًا وما ينبغي أن يكون خيرًا. أصبحوا لا يستطيعون لا أن يدينوا ولا أن يبرؤوا. أصبح البشر يقتل بعضهم بعضًا تحت سيطرة بغض لا معنى له وكره لا يُفهم. هم يجتمعون ليؤلفوا جيوشًا كبيرة، فما أن يدخلوا معركة حتى يندلع الشقاق في جميع الصفوف فتنحل الجيوش، ويأخذ الجنود يهجم بعضهم على بعض، فيَعُض بعضهم بعضًا، ويذبح بعضهم بعضًا، ويلتهم بعضهم بعضًا. في المدن يدق ناقوس الخطر طوال النهار، ويُستنفر الشعب. ولكن ما الذي يستنفره ؟ ولماذا يستنفره ؟ ذلك أمر لا يعرف أحد عنه شيئًا. الرعب يستبد بجميع الخلق. المهن العادية هجرها أصحابها، لأن كل واحد يعرض آراءه وإصلاحاته، وما من أحد يستطيع أن يتفق مع أحد. الزراعة أُهملت إهمالًا تامًا. هنا وهناك يجتمع أناس فيشكلون جماعات ويتهافتون على القيام بعمل مشترك، متعاهدين بأغلظ الأيمان على ألا يفترقوا قط، ولكنهم ما يلبثون أن يشرعوا في شيء لا يمت بأي صلة إلى ما عقدوا النية على القيام به، ثم ما يلبثون أن يأخذوا في التراشق بالتهم، ثم مايلبثون أن يقتتلوا فيذبح بعضهم بعضًا. وتشتعل الحرائق، وتظهم المجاعة. كل شيء يصيبه الدمار، وجميع الناس يهلكون شيئًا فشيئًآ.”

“Bitter is the ascent of Golgotha...”

“It may be that you ought to thank God; why, for all you know he may be preserving you for something. Be of great heart and fear less.”

“The game's not worth the candle”

“You have only to creep into a secluded corner or into a crocodile, to shut your eyes, and you immediately devise a perfect millennium for mankind.”

“Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the ordinary conditions of life; they were loop-holes, as it were, in that ordinary life through which there came glimpses of something sublime.”

“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.”

“Certainly we shall rise, certainly we shall see and gladly, joyfully tell one another all that has been,” Alyosha replied, half laughing, half in ecstasy.”