Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Spring was at hand. " I believe I might recover," I thought, "if I could get out of this shell into the light of day, into the fields and woods." It was so long since I had seen them. I remember, too, it came into my mind how nice it would be if by some magic, some enchantment, I could forget everything that had happened in the last few years; forget everything, refresh my mind, and begin again with new energy. In those days, I still dreamed of that and hoped for a renewal of life. "Better go into an asylum," I thought, "to get one's brain turned upside down and rearranged anew, and then be cured again.”
“Does it matter whether it was a dream or a reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?”
“He thought of nothing, desired nothing, except not to lag behind and to do the best job he could.”
“"El verdadero “gentleman” no debe denotar emoción aunque pierda toda su fortuna. Debe hacer poco caso del dinero, como si fuese cosa que no mereciera la pena de fijar atención en él.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from El jugador
“What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind - then all the rest is prejudice, simply aritificial terrors and there are no barriers and it's all as it should be.”
“There is a good deal of posturing here, of romantic frenzy, of wild Karamazovian unrestraint and sentimentality—yes, and also something else, gentlemen of the jury, something that cries out in the soul, that throbs incessantly in his mind, and poisons his heart unto death; this something is conscience, gentlemen of the jury, the judgment, the terrible pangs of conscience!”
“He seemed, indeed, to accept everything without the least condemnation though often grieving bitterly.”
“As for my own personal opinion. I find it somehow unseemly to love only well-being. Whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, smashing things is also sometimes very pleasant. I am not standing up for suffering, or for well-being either. I am standing up for my own caprices and for having them guaranteed when necessary.”
topics: notes-from-underground
“She was one of those creatures which seem only not to speak because the mechanism of their mouth does not allow them to.”
“It's precisely their diseases that people pride themselves on, and I do-more perhaps than anybody else. Let's not argue; my objection was absurd. But that aside, I am firmly convinced that not only excess of consciousness, but any consciousness at all is a disease.”
“It's difficult to judge beauty; I am not ready yet. Beauty is a riddle.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from The Idiot
“I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy.”
“I love to hear singing to a street organ,” said Raskolnikov, and his manner seemed strangely out of keeping with the subject—“I like it on cold, dark, damp autumn evenings—they must be damp—when all the passers-by have pale green, sickly faces, or better still when wet snow is falling straight down, when there’s no wind—you know what I mean? and the street lamps shine through it ….”
“Stepan Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations with himself. He was incapable of deceiving himself and persuading himself that he repented of his conduct. He could not at this date repent of the fact that he, a handsome, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love with his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children, and only a year younger than himself. All he repented of was that he had not succeeded better in hiding it from his wife. But he felt all the difficulty of his position and was sorry for his wife, his children, and himself. Possibly he might have managed to conceal his sins better from his wife if he had anticipated that the knowledge of them would have had such an effect on her.”
“Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I’ll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Crime and Punishment
“why had he happened to hear such a discussion and such ideas at the very moment when his own brain was just conceiving … the very same ideas? And why, just at the moment when he had brought away the embryo of his idea from the old woman had he dropped at once upon a conversation about her? This coincidence always seemed strange to him. This trivial talk in a tavern had an immense influence on him in his later action; as though there had really been in it something preordained, some guiding hint…”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Crime and Punishment
“Es una mujer que anhela sufrir por alguien, y si se la privase de este sufrimiento, sería capaz, tal vez, de arrojarse por una ventana.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Crimen y castigo
“Kto sumienie posiada, niech cierpi, skoro zdał sobie sprawę z pomyłki. Będzie mu to karą – obok katorgi.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Crime and Punishment
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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.