Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky
“He thought of nothing, desired nothing, except not to lag behind and to do the best job he could.”
“I would give away all this superstellar life, all the ranks and honours, simply to be transformed into the soul of a merchant’s wife weighing eighteen stone and set candles at God’s shrine”
“At the dawn of my days, when still a little child, I had an older brother who died in his youth, before my eyes, being only seventeen years old. And later, making my way through life, I gradually came to see that this brother was, as it were, a pointer and a destination from above in my fate, for if he had not appeared in my life, if he had not been at all, then never, perhaps, as I think, would I have entered monastic orders and set out upon this precious path. That first appearance was still in my childhood, and now, on the decline of my path, a repetition of him, as it were, appeared before my eyes.”
“I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy.”
“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
“He saw that the inmost recesses of her soul, that had always hitherto lain open before him, were closed against him.”
“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!”
“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
“She was one of those creatures which seem only not to speak because the mechanism of their mouth does not allow them to.”
“He seemed, indeed, to accept everything without the least condemnation though often grieving bitterly.”
“what gets me, Varinka, is not really the lack of money but all those little troubles life is full of, all whispering, all those jeers and jokes.”
topics: poor-folk
“Thou wouldst not enslave man by a miracle, and didst crave faith given freely, not based on miracle. Thou didst crave for free love and not the base raptures of the slave before the might that has overawed him for ever.”
topics: faith
“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.”
“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
“Why, my dear fellow, you may drive yourself into delirium if you have the impulse to work upon your nerves, to go ringing bells at night and asking about blood!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Crime and Punishment
“Meanwhile, we should supress the army and the navy. Both at once? Yes, in order to have universal peace! But if others don't supress theirs wouldn't they be tempted to invade us. How can we know? By supressing ours. In that way we shall know.”
“Send anyone who preaches war to a special frontline legion -into the assault, into the attack, ahead of everyone.”
topics: war
“Možda je tada samo po snazi svojih želja i ocijenio sebe kao čovjeka kome je dozvoljeno više nego drugima.”
Group of Brands
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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.