Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Everything, even his crime, his sentence and imprisonment, seemed to him now in the first rush of feeling an external, strange fact with which he had no concern. But he could not think for long together of anything that evening, and he could not have analysed anything consciously; he was simply feeling. Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Crime and Punishment
“Hm ... yes ... a man holds the fate of the world in his two hands, and yet, simply because he is afraid, he just lets things drift -- that is a truism ... I wonder what men are most afraid of ...”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Crime and Punishment
topics: fear
“he drew out of his pocket an old-fashioned flat silver watch, on the back of which was engraved a globe; the chain was of steel.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Crime and Punishment
“I certainly was in some uneasiness. I was, of course, not accustomed to society of any kind. At school I had been on familiar terms with my schoolfellows, but I was scarcely friends with anyone; I made a little corner for myself and lived in it. But this was not what disturbed me. In any case I vowed not to let myself be drawn into argument and to say nothing beyond what was necessary, so that no one could draw any conclusions about me; above all—to avoid argument.”
“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
“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.”
“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
“As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simplehearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.”
“All that day it seemed to her as though she were acting in a theater with actors cleverer than she, and that her bad acting was spoiling the whole performance.”
“But the church, like a tender, loving mother holds aloof from active punishment herself, as the sinner is too severely punished already by the civil law, and there must be at least someone to have pity on him. The church holds aloof, above all, because its judgment alone contains the truth...”
“Most likely not, but he believed solely because he desired to believe and possibly he fully believed in his secret heart, even when he said: "I do not believe till I see".”
“-Je pense qu'on doit aimer la vie par-dessus tout. -Aimer la vie, plutôt que le sens de la vie? -Certainement. L'aimer avant de raisonner, sans logique, comme tu dis; alors seulement on en comprendra le sens.”
“He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it.”
“Alexey Alexandrovitch was standing face to face with life, with the possibility of his wife's loving someone other than himself, and this seemed to him very irrational and incomprehensible because it was life itself.”
“porque la pluma me asusta y me acuso de falta de claridad en trasladar mis pensamientos al papel.”
“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”
“Those joys were so small that they passed unnoticed, like gold in sand, and at bad moments she could see nothing but the pain, nothing but sand; but there were good moments too when she saw nothing but the joy, nothing but gold. Now”
“The thought of the harm caused to her husband aroused in her a feeling like repulsion, and akin to what a drowning man might feel who has shaken off another man clinging to him. That man did drown. It was an evil action, of course, but it was the sole means of escape, and better not to brood over these fearful facts.”
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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.