Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Russia. I speak not only to fathers here, but to all fathers I cry out: ‘Fathers, provoke not your children!’ Let us first fulfill Christ’s commandment ourselves, and only then let us expect the same of our children.”

“She fell on her knees before him as though in a sudden frenzy. “I’ve been waiting all my life for someone like you, I knew that someone like you would come and forgive me. I believed that, nasty as I am, someone would really love me, not only with a shameful love!”

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov”

“O youth! youth! you have no concerns, you possess, as it were, all the treasures of the universe, even grief is a comfort to you, even sadness suits your looks, you are self-assured and bold, you say: 'Look, I'm the only one alive!' while the very days of your life run away and vanish without a trace and without number and everything in you disappears like wax, like snow in the heat of the sun... And perhaps the entire secret of your charm consists not in the possibility of doing everything, but in the possibility of thinking you can do everything, perhaps it consists precisely in the fact that you want only to scatter on the wind energies that you wouldn't know how to use for anything else, perhaps it consists in the fact that each one of us seriously regards himself as a spendthrift and seriously considers that he has the right to say: 'Oh, the things I could have done if only I hadn't wasted my time!”

“Man is a creature who gets used to everything, and that, I think, is the best definition of him.”

“وإذا هاجتِ الأحزان في قلب امرئٍ وتألّبت المحن، أضحى أحيانًا خسيسًا لا يرى إلا السيئات والنقائص، أما الفضائل فتصبح كالقذى في عينه كلما لمسها في غيره.”

“He thought of nothing, desired nothing, except not to lag behind and to do the best job he could.”

“And now, when the shades of evening begin to steal over my life, what have I left fresher, more precious, than the memories of the storm—so soon over—of early morning, of spring?”

“As usual, the fickle, unreasoning world took Muff Potter to its bosom and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before. But that sort of conduct is to the world's credit; therefore it is not well to find fault with 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.”

“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.”

“SO endeth this chronicle. It being strictly a history of a boy, it must stop here; the story could not go much further without becoming the history of a man. When one writes a novel about grown people, he knows exactly where to stop—that is, with a marriage; but when he writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best can. Most”

“What exasperated her was that Charles seemed to have no notion of her torment. His conviction that he was making her happy struck her as impudent imbecility, his uxorious complacency as ingratitude.”

“It all depends with how much judgment and knowledge the thing's done.”

“Meanwhile, genuine equality says: "What do I care if you are more talented than I, more clever, more handsome? I'm glad for it, rather, because I love you. But though I may be less important to you, I respect myself as a person; and you know this and respect me yourself, and I am happy with your respect. If you, through your abilities, can bring me and everyone else a hundredfold more benefit than I can bring you, then I bless you for it; I marvel at you and thank you, and in no way do I hold my awe for you as something shameful; on the contrary, I am happy that I am grateful to you, and if I work for you and for all in so far as my feeble abilities allow, then it is certainly not to try to balance my account with you, but because I love you all.”

“Some details escaped her, but the regret remained with her.”

“She constantly complained of her nerves, her chest, her liver. The noise of footsteps made her ill; when people left her, solitude became odious to her; if they came back, it was doubtless to see her die.”

“Our own humble and meek ones, fasters and keepers of silence, will arise and go forth for a great deed.”

“When you are older, you'll understand for yourself the influence of age on convictions.”

“But the greatness of it lies just in the fact that it is a mystery--that the passing earthly show and the eternal verity are brought together in it.”