Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“If you chase several hares at once, you won't overtake any one of them.”

“If you want to be right, I can give you that satisfaction. You're in the right; but I'm going all the same.”

“He had been stricken with horror, not so much of death, as of life, without any knowledge of whence, and why, and how, and what it was”

“When reason fails, the devil helps!" he thought with a strange grin. This chance raised his spirits extraordinarily.”

“If you chase several hares at once, you won't undertake any one of them.”

“So a man will sometimes go through half an hour of mortal terror with a brigand, yet when the knife is at his throat at last, he feels no fear. Raskolnikov”

“Well, you may abuse me, be angry with me if you like," Porfiry Petrovitch began again, "but I can't resist. Allow me one little question (I know I am troubling you). There is just one little notion I want to express, simply that I may not forget it.”

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

“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.”

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

“Levin lost all sense of time, and could not have told whether it was late or early now. A change began to come over his work, which gave him immense satisfaction. In the midst of his toil there were moments during which he forgot what he was doing, and it came all easy to him, and at those same moments his row was almost as smooth and well cut as Tit's.”

“Stepan Arkadyevitch had gone to Petersburg to perform the most natural and essential official duty—so familiar to everyone in the government service, though incomprehensible to outsiders—that duty, but for which one could hardly be in government service, of reminding the ministry of his existence—and having, for the due performance of this rite, taken all the available cash from home, was gaily and agreeably spending his days at the races and in the summer villas.”

“Totuşi, acum, viaţa mea, întreaga mea viaţă, independent de ceea ce poate să mi se întâmple într-un moment anume, ea nu numai că nu e lipsită de înţeles ca altădată, dar are un sens vădit: al binelui pe care îl pot pune în ea.”

“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.”

“But it did not interest her at all. She and Levin had a conversation of there own, yet not a conversation but a sort of mysterious communication, which brought them every moment nearer, and stirred in both a sense of joyful terror before the unknown into which they were entering.”

“In order to undertake anything in family life, it is necessary that there be either complete discord between the spouses or loving harmony. But when the relations between spouses are uncertain and there is neither the one nor the other, nothing can be undertaken.”

“Well, I know. It's jam—that's what it is. Forty times I've said if you didn't let that jam alone I'd skin you. Hand me that switch.”

“... et l'ennui, araignée silencieuse, filait sa toile dans l'ombre, à tous les coins de son coeur.”

“Prima di sposarsi, Emma aveva creduto d'amare; ma la felicità che avrebbe dovuto nascere dal quell'amore non era venuta, e pensava che doveva essersi sbagliata. Ella cercava ora, di sapere che cosa volessero esattamente dire, nella vita, le parole felicità, passione ed ebbrezza, che le erano sembrate tanto belle, lette nei libri”

“كي تجعل احداً يرغب في شيء ما , فكل ما عليك فعله هو ان تجعل هذا الشئ صعب المنال”