Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education.”

“And do you know, I came with horror to the conclusion that, if anything could dissipate my love for humanity, it would be ingratitude. In short, I am a hired servant, I expect my payment at once--that is, praise, and the repayment of love with love. Otherwise I am incapable of loving anyone.”

“How she listened, the first time, to the sonorous lamentations of romantic melancholia echoing out across heaven and earth! If her childhood had been spent in the dark back-room of a shop in some town, she would now perhaps have been kindled by the lyric surgings of nature which only normally reach us as through the interpretation of a writer.”

“En todos los tiempos, el hombre honrado es un cobarde y un esclavo”

“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.”

“Aliás, nessa noite não conseguia pensar longa e fixamente em nada, concentrar o pensamento em coisa alguma, tampouco conseguiria resolver, então, conscientemente, o que quer que fosse; a única coisa que fazia era sentir. Em vez da dialética surgia a vida, e na sua consciência devia se elaborar algo totalmente distinto.”

“تعرف انت ما الذي بجب ان تفعله ،،، لا تكذب لا تكذب على نفسك. ان من يكذب على نفسه و يرضى ان تنطلي عليه اكاذيبه يصل إلى ان يصبح عاجزا عن رؤية الحقيقة لا في نفسه و لا فيما حوله .. لهذا السبب فقد احترامه لنفسه و لغيره .. لا يحترم أحدا .. اصبح لا يحب أحدا فاصبح بغير حب ، يستسلم للأهواء و يندفع وراء الملذات و يصل إلى درجة الحيوانية و ما هذا الا لانه يكذب بغير انقطاع أن من يكذب بهذا الشكل يسرع كذلك إلى أهانه نفسه .. الا يشعر المرء بكثير من اللذة حين يحس انه مهان. و هو يعلم مع ذلك انه ما من احد قال له كلمة سوء و إنما اخترع الاهانه ليتلذد بها و كذب على نفسه و بالغ و حمل كلمة من الكلمات على غير معناها و يهين نفسه متلذذا لحد الفرح. فإذا هو يصل إلى الشعور بالكره.”

“During these three months I have gone through much; I mean, I have gone through much in myself; and now there are the things I am going to see and go through. There will be much to be written.”

“For what is it you and I are trying to do now? What I'm trying to do is to attempt to explain to you as quickly as possible the most important thing about me, that is to say, what sort of man I am, what I believe in what I hope for - that's it isn't it? And that's why I declare that I accept God plainly and simply. But there's this that has to be said: if God really exists and if he really has created the world, then, as we all know, he created it in accordance with the Euclidean geometry, and he created the human mind with the conception of only the three dimensions of space. And yet there have been and there still are mathematicians and philosophers, some of them indeed men of extraordinary genius, who doubt whether the whole universe, or, to put it more wildly, all existence was created only according to Euclidean geometry and they even dare to dream that two parallel lines which, according to Euclid can never meet on earth, may meet somewhere in infinity. I, my dear chap, have come to the conclusion that if I can't understand even that, then how can I be expected to understand about God? I humbly admit that I have no abilities for settling such questions. And I advise you too, Aloysha, my friend, never to think about it, and least of all about whether there is a God or not. All these problems which are entirely unsuitable to a mind created with the idea of only three dimensions. And so I accept God, and I accept him not only without reluctance, but what's more, I accept his divine wisdom and his purpose- which are completely beyond our comprehension.”

“Alors, sûr d'être aimé, il ne se gêna pas pas, et insensiblement ses façons changèrent. Il n'avait plus, comme autrefois, de ces mots si doux qui la faisaient pleurer, ni de ces véhémentes careses qui la rendaient folle. // Elle n'y voulut pas croire; elle redoubla de tendresse; et Rodolphe, de moins en moins, cacha son indifférence.”

“No honor, no heart, no religion; a corrupt woman. I always knew it and always saw it, though I tried to deceive myself to spare her," he said to himself. And it actually seemed to him that he always had seen it: he recalled incidents of their past life, in which he had never seen anything wrong before—now these incidents proved clearly that she had always been a corrupt woman. "I made a mistake in linking my life to hers; but there was nothing wrong in my mistake, and so I cannot be unhappy. It's not I that am to blame," he told himself, "but she. But I have nothing to do with her. She does not exist for me… ”

“But all profit that is out of proportion to the labor expended is dishonest.”

“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.”

“The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and slaves in the West at the period of this story—that is to say, thirty or forty years ago. Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in. THE AUTHOR. HARTFORD, 1876. CHAPTER I "TOM!" No answer. "TOM!" No answer. "What's gone with that boy,  I wonder? You TOM!”

“Sight-seeing, aside from the fact that everything had been seen already, could not have for him--and intelligent Russian--the inexplicable importance attached to it by the English.”

“But this I can say for certain: though I did that cruel thing purposely, it was not an impulse from the heart, but camefrom my evil brain. This cruelty was so affected, so purposely made up, so completely a product of the brain, of books, that I could not even keep it up a minute--first I dashed away to avoid seeing her, and then in shame and despair rushed after Liza.”

“Once upon a time there was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire. So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God; 'She once pulled up an onion in her garden,' said he, 'and gave it to a beggar woman.' And God answered: 'You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.' The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. 'Come,' said he, 'catch hold and I'll pull you out.' he began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her. But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. 'I'm to be pulled out, not you. It's my onion, not yours.' As soon as she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away.”

“All the cruellest words a coarse man could say, he said to her in her imagination, and she could not forgive him for them, as if he had actually said them to her.”

“Diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet—no doubt, as far as strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer.”

“Say—what is dead cats good for, Huck?" "Good for? Cure warts with.”