Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Yet according to the Russian understanding and hope, it is not the Church that needs to be transformed into the state, as from a lower to a higher type, but, on the contrary, the state should end by being accounted worthy of becoming only the Church alone, and nothing else but that. And so be it, so be it!”

“Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God? Think only of repentance, continual repentance, but dismiss fear altogether. Believe that God loves you as you cannot conceive; that He loves you with your sin, in your sin. It has been said of old that over one repentant sinner there is more joy in heaven than over ten righteous men. Go, and fear not. Be not bitter against men. Be not angry if you are wronged. Forgive the dead man in your heart what wrong he did you. Be reconciled with him in truth. If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner, even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and expiate not only your own sins but the sins of others.”

“It was as though an abscess that had been forming for a month past in his heart had suddenly broken. Freedom, freedom! He was free from that spell, that sorcery, that obsession!”

“هذا حسن , و لكن هل هم كثيرون اولئك الذين يصمدون و يواظبون علي الاهتمام بسعادة الآخرين ؟ إذا لم يكن المال إالها فهو نصف إله و إنه إغراء كبير , ثم هناك المرأة أيضا , ثم هناك الشك ثم هناك الحسد, فإذا بالمرء ينسي القضية الأساسية و يمضي يهتم بالأمور الصغيرة.”

“He had said,”Mother, my little heart, in truth we are each responsible to all for all, it’s only that men don’t know this. If they knew it, the world would be a paradise at once.”

“This nightmare occupied some ten pages of manuscript and wound up with a sermon so destructive of all hope to non-Presbyterians that it took the first prize. This composition was considered to be the very finest effort of the evening. The mayor of the village, in delivering the prize to the author of it, made a warm speech in which he said that it was by far the most "eloquent" thing he had ever listened to, and that Daniel Webster himself might well be proud of it.”

“Because wanton or venal lips has murmured the same words to him, he only half believed in the sincerity of those he was hearing now; to a large extent they should be disregarded, he believed, because such exaggerated language must surely mask commonplace feelings: as if the soul in its fullness did not sometimes overflow into the most barren metaphors, since no one can ever tell the precise measures of his own needs, of his own ideas, of his own pain, and human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when what we long to do is make music that will move the stars to pity.”

“Però non si ammazzano le donne. Le tieni prigioniere, ma non le ammazzi. Sono sempre belle, e ricche, e spaventatissime. Ti prendi i loro orologini e gli altri ciondoli, ma devi sempre toglierti il cappello e parlare in modo educato. Non c’è gente più bene educata dei banditi... puoi leggerlo in qualsiasi libro. Be’, insomma, le donne finiscono per innamorarsi di te e, dopo che sono state nella grotta per una settimana o due, la smettono di frignare, e in seguito non riusciresti più a convincerle ad andarsene. Se le scacciassi, si volterebbero, a un certo punto, e tornerebbero indietro. Succede così in tutti i libri.”

“Het was een van die zuivere gevoelens die het normale leven niet verstoren, die men koestert omdat ze zeldzaam zijn en waarvan het verlies dieper zou kwetsen dan dat het bezit voldoening schenkt.”

“He could not endure without mortification, without resentment even, that the holiest of holy men should have been exposed to the jeering and spiteful mockery of the frivolous crowd so inferior to him.”

“But in the course of the war they waged against the taiga, scorching it with fire, and attacking it with iron, Makar’s fathers and grandfathers, almost without knowing it, became themselves a rude part of it. They married Yakut women, and adopted the language and customs of their wives, their own features of the Russian race to which they belonged becoming obliterated and fading altogether with time.”

“If the evil-doing of men moves you to indignation and overwhelming distress, even to a desire for vengeance on the evil-doers, shun above all things that feeling. Go at once and seek suffering for yourself, as though you were yourself guilty of that wrong. Accept that suffering and bear it and your heart will find comfort, and you will understand that you too are guilty, for you might have been a light to the evil-doers, even as the one man sinless, and you were not a light to them. If you had been a light, you would have lightened the path for others too, and the evil-doer might perhaps have been saved by your light from his sin. And even though your light was shining, yet you see men were not saved by it, hold firm and doubt not the power of the heavenly light.”

“¿En que estaba pensando? Si, en mi vida; como sea que me la represente no puede ser sino dolor. Todos estamos llamados a sufrir, lo sabemos y queremos disimularlo de alguna manera. Pero cuando nos clava sus ojos la verdad, ¿Que nos queda por hacer?”

“Te iba a hablar de los dolores de la humanidad en general, pero será preferible que me refiera exclusivamente al dolor de los niños. Mi argumentación quedará reducida a una décima parte, pero vale más así. Desde luego, salgo perdiendo. En primer lugar, porque a los niños se les puede querer aunque vayan sucios y feos (dejando aparte que a mí ningún niño me parece feo). En segundo lugar, porque si no hablo de los adultos, no es únicamente porque repelen y no merecen que se les ame, sino porque tienen una compensación: han probado el fruto prohibido, han conocido el bien y el mal y se han convertido en seres 'semejantes a Dios'.”

“for the idea was by no means so stupid as it seems now that it has failed.... (Everything seems stupid when it fails.)”

“They have science, but science contains nothing that does not come through the senses. The spiritual world, the nobler side of man’s being, has been rejected altogether, banned as it were triumphantly, perhaps even with hatred.”

“Se há tantas cabeças quantas são as maneiras de pensar, há de haver tantos tipos de amor quantos são os corações.”

“Imagine: inside, in the nerves, in the head―that is, these nerves are there in the brain... (damn them!) there are sort of little tails, the little tails of those nerves, and as soon as they begin quivering... that is, you see, I took at something with my eyes and begin quivering, those little tails... and when they quiver, then an image appears... it doesn't appear at once, but an instant, a second, passes... and then something like a moment appears; that is, not a moment―devil take the moment!―but an image; that is, an object, or an action, damn it! That's why I see and then think, because of those tails, not because I've got a soul, and that I am some sort of image and likeness. All that is nonsense! Rakitin explained it all to me yesterday, brother, and it simply bowled me over. It's magnificent, Alyosha, this science! A new man's arising―that I understand... And yet I am sorry to lose God!”

“Unica salvare de oameni e să-ți ascunzi de ei rănile.”

“The old man himself points out to him that he has no right to add anything to what has already been said once. That, if you like, is the most basic feature of Roman Catholicism, in my opinion at least: ‘Everything,’ they say, ‘has been handed over by you to the pope, therefore everything now belongs to the pope, and you may as well not come at all now, or at least don’t interfere with us for the time being.”