Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Here was an unparalleled thing, so that even from such an imperious and contemptuously proud girl as she was, such extremely frank testimony, such sacrifice, such self-immolation was almost impossible to expect. And for what, for whom? To save her betrayer and offender, at least somehow, at least slightly, to contribute to his salvation by creating a good impression in his favor!”

“I think every one should love life above everything in the world.” “Love life more than the meaning of it?” “Certainly, love it, regardless of logic as you say, it must be regardless of logic, and it's only then one will understand the meaning of it. I have thought so a long time. Half your work is done, Ivan, you love life, now you've only to try to do the second half and you are saved.”

“Do you know I've been sitting here thinking to myself: that if I didn't believe in life, if I lost faith in the woman I love, lost faith in the order of things, were convinced , in fact, that everything is disorderly, damnable, and perhaps devil-ridden chaos, if I were struck by every horror of man's disillusionment - still I should want to live and, having once tried of the cup, I would not turn from it until I have drained it!”

“… ! And would I have been this way, would I have been this way on this night, and at this moment, sitting with you now, would I be talking like this, would I be moving like this, would I look at you and at the world like this, if I really were a parricide, when even the inadvertent killing of Grigory gave me no rest all night—not from fear, oh! not just from fear of your punishment! The disgrace of it! And you want me to reveal and tell about yet another new meanness of mine, yet another new disgrace, to such scoffers as you, who do not see anything and do not believe anything, blind moles and scoffers, even if it would save me from your accusation?”

“socialism is not merely the labor question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth.”

“...pe atunci traiam fara grija, faceam ce voiam, infloream, intr-un cuvant. Pe atunci nu-mi trecea prin cap ca omul nu e o planta si ca nu poate inflori multa vreme.”

“Ama, širok je čovjek, čak i preširok, ja bih ga suzio.”

“Connoisseurs of Russian beauty could have foretold with certainty that this fresh, still youthful beauty would lose its harmony by the age of thirty, would “spread”; that the face would become puffy, and that wrinkles would very soon appear upon her forehead and round the eyes; the complexion would grow coarse and red perhaps—in fact, that it was the beauty of the moment, the fleeting beauty which is so often met with in Russian women.”

“And the truth is not in gudgeons, I’ve already declared as much! Father monks, why do you fast? Why do you expect a heavenly reward for that? For such a reward, I’ll go and start fasting, too! No, holy monk, try being virtuous in life, be useful to society without shutting yourself up in a monastery on other people’s bread, and without expecting any reward up there—that’s a little more difficult. I, too, can talk sensibly, Father Superior. What have we got here?” He went up to the table. “Old port wine from Factori’s, Médoc bottled by Eliseyev Brothers!8 A far cry from gudgeons, eh, fathers ? Look at all these bottles the fathers have set out—heh, heh, heh! And who has provided it all? The Russian peasant, the laborer, bringing you the pittance earned by his callused hands, taking it from his family, from the needs of the state! You, holy fathers, are sucking the people’s blood!”

“Only Anna was sad. She knew that now, from Dolly’s departure, no one again would stir up within her soul the feelings that had been roused by their conversation. It hurt her to stir up these feelings, but yet she knew that that was the best part of her soul, and that that part of her soul would quickly be smothered in the life she was leading.”

“No es posible imaginar siquiera toda la deshonra y la decadencia moral con la que es capaz de transigir el celoso sin el menor remordimiento de conciencia. Y no es que sean almas vulgares y sucias. Al contrario, es posible ocultarse bajo las mesas, sobornar a gente infame y acostumbrarse a la inmundicia más ruin del acecho y el fisgoneo teniendo un gran corazón, sintiendo un amor puro, lleno de abnegación.”

“God bless you! Well, go, love Ivan!” was the last word that burst from Mitya.”

“...sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man stores up many such memories to take into life, then he is saved for his whole life.”

“Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. We are oppressed at being men — men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalised man.”

“for it is precisely the humanity, affability, and brotherly compassion of a doctor which prove the most efficacious remedies for his patients.”

“A new-comer of any age or either sex was an impressive curiosity in the poor little shabby village of St. Petersburg.”

“But it is just in that cold, abominable half despair, half belief, in that conscious burying oneself alive for grief in the underworld for forty years, in that acutely recognised and yet partly doubtful hopelessness of one's position, in that hell of unsatisfied desires turned inward, in that fever of oscillations, of resolutions determined for ever and repented of again a minute later--that the savour of that strange enjoyment of which I have spoken lies.”

“Yaşam tarzım, sizin hoşunuza gidebilir ya da gitmeyebilir, ama benim için hiç fark etmez, beni tanımak istiyorsanız saygı göstermek zorundasınız" anlamı taşıyan soğuk ve mağrur bir tavır takınmıştı.”

“Suddenly, yesterday, at four o'clock in the afternoon, a gentleman of exceptional stoutness enters the foreigner's shop in an intoxicated condition, pays his entrance money, and immediately without any warning leaps into the jaws of the crocodile, who was forced, of course, to swallow him, if only from an instinct of self-preservation, to avoid being crushed.”

“He looked back on his past life, which had been so wretched. How had he been able to bear that terrible burden? He had borne it because through the darkness flickered a tiny star of hope. Once when he was alive he thought that perhaps a better lot might still be in store for him. But now that he had advanced toward the end, hope, too, was dead.”