Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“It’s not God that I do not accept, you understand, it is this world of God’s, created by God, that I do not accept and cannot agree to accept.”

“Once he went into the mountains on a clear, sunny day, and wandered about for a long time with a tormenting thought that refused to take shape. Before him was the shining sky, below him the lake, around him the horizon, bright and infinite, as if it went on forever. For a long time he looked and suffered. He remembered now how he had stretched out his arms to that bright, infinite blue and wept. What had tormented him was that he was a total stranger to it all. What was this banquet, what was this great everlasting feast, to which he had long been drawn, always, ever since childhood, and which he could never join? Every morning the same bright sun rises; every morning there is a rainbow over the waterfall; every evening the highest snowcapped mountain, there, far away, at the edge of the sky, burns with a crimson flame; every little fly that buzzes near him in a hot ray of sunlight participates in this whole chorus: knows its place, loves it, and is happy; every little blade of grass grows and is happy! And everything has its path, and everything knows its path, goes with a song and comes back with a song; only he knows nothing, understands nothing, neither people nor sounds, a stranger to everything and a castaway.”

“Man stands alone in the universe, responsible for his condition, likely to remain in a lowly state, but free to reach above the stars.”

“O youth! youth! you go your way heedless, uncaring – as if you owned all the treasures of the world; even grief elates you, even sorrow sits well upon your brow. You are self-confident and insolent and you say, 'I alone am alive – behold!' even while your own days fly past and vanish without trace and without number, and everything within you melts away like wax in the sun .. like snow .. and perhaps the whole secret of your enchantment lies not, indeed, in your power to do whatever you may will, but in your power to think that there is nothing you will not do: it is this that you scatter to the winds – gifts which you could never have used to any other purpose. Each of us feels most deeply convinced that he has been too prodigal of his gifts – that he has a right to cry, 'Oh, what could I not have done, if only I had not wasted my time.”

“انكم لا تستطيعون ان تتخيلوا مدة الألم والحنق اللذين يغزوان نفوسكم حين تعبرون عن فكرة عظيمة قدستموها طوال حياتكم، فأذا بأفراد جهلة يجرونها على أرض الشارع وسط أناس لا يقلون عنهم غباء وحماقة، ثم أذا انتم فجأة ترونها في السوق وقد تغيرت سحنتها حتى لا تكاد تعرف، وتمرغت في الوحل وتشوهت وتكسرت، وتغيرت أبعادها وفقدت انسجامها، كلعبة بين ايدي اطفال.....لا! لم يكن الأمر كذلك في عهدنا، ولا الى هذا صبونا. لقد أصبحت أنكر كل شي ولا أعرف شيئا. يجب أن يعود زماننا فيرد الى الطريق القويم كل ما يترنح اليوم ويهتز، والا فما عسى يحدث؟”

“I am too young and I've loved you too much.”

“يا صاحبي :إنني لست على ما يبدو لك مني ، فما مظاهري سوى رداء دقيق الصنع محوك من خيوط التساهل والحسنى ، ألتف به ليدرأ عني تطفلك ويقيك من إهمالي وتغافلي . وأما ذاتي الخفية الكبرى التي أدعوها أنا فسر غامض مكنون في أعماق سكون نفسي ولا يدركه أحد سواي ، وهنالك سيبقى أبدا غامضا مستترا . يا صاحبي: إنني أود أن لا تصدق ما أقول وأن لا تثق بما أفعل ، لأن أقوالي ليست سوى صدى لأفكارك، وأفعالي ليست سوى أشباح آمالك .”

“I'm a master of speaking silently—all my life I've spoken silently and I've lived through entire tragedies in silence.”

“I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness- a real thorough-going illness.”

“It's God that's worrying me. That's the only thing that's worrying me. What if He doesn't exist? What if Rakitin's right -that it's an idea made up by men? Then, if He doesn't exist, man is the king of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God? That's the question. I always come back to that. Who is man going to love then? To whom will he be thankful? To whom will he sing the hymn? Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says that one can love humanity instead of God. Well, only an idiot can maintain that. I can't understand it. Life's easy for Rakitin. 'You'd better think about the extension of civic rights, or of keeping down the price of meat. You will show your love for humanity more simply and directly by that, than by philosophy.' I answered him: 'Well, but you, without a God, are more likely to raise the price of meat if it suits you, and make a rouble on every penny.' He lost his temper. But after all, what is goodness? Answer that, Alyosha. Goodness is one thing with me and another with a Chinaman, so it's relative. Or isn't it? Is it not relative? A treacherous question! You won't laugh if I tell you it's kept me awake for two nights. I only wonder now how people can live and think nothing about it. Vanity!”

“I think that if one is faced by inevitable destruction -- if a house is falling upon you, for instance -- one must feel a great longing to sit down, close one's eyes and wait, come what may . . .”

“You cannot imagine what sorrow and anger seize one's whole soul when a great idea, which one has long and piously revered, is picked up by some bunglers and dragged into the street, to more fools like themselves, and one suddenly meets it in the flea market, unrecognizable, dirty, askew, absurdly presented, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid children.”

“God is the pain of the fear of death”

“There are as many kinds of love, as there are hearts”

“Being at a loss to resolve these questions, I am resolved to leave them without any resolution.”

“أيها السيد الكريم، ليس الفقر رذيلة، ولا الإدمان على السكر فضيلة، أنا أعرف ذلك أيضا. ولكن البؤس رذيلة أيها السيد الكريم، البؤس رذيلة. يستطيع المرء في الفقر أن يظل محافظا على نبل عواطفه الفطرية، أما في البؤس فلا يستطيع ذلك يوما، وما من أحد يستطيعه قط. إذا كنت في البؤس فإنك لا تطرد من مجتمع البشر ضربا بالعصا، بل تطرد منه ضربا بالمكنسة بغية إذلالك مزيد من الإذلال. والناس على حق في ذلة لأنك في البؤس أول من يريد هذا الذل لنفسه بنفسه”

“Bad people are to be found everywhere, but even among the worst there may be something good.”

“He felt that he was himself and did not wish to be anyone else. He only wished now to be better than he had been formerly”

“حب الرجل ينقلب إلى أنقاض متى اطمأن إلى حب المرأة”

“There it is!' he thought with rapture. 'When I was already in despair, and when it seemed there would be no end- there it is! She loves me. She's confessed it.”