Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“It must be added that, in a way, he was indeed a member of our younger generation, which means that he was honest, that he believed in, demanded, and searched for truth that, because he believed in it, he yearned for to serve it and give his whole strength he was spoiling for immediate action, was prepared to sacrifice everything, his life itself, in an act of supreme devotion. Unfortunately, these young men often fail to understand that the sacrifice of their lives may be the easiest of all sacrifices, much easier, for instance, than giving up five or six years of their seething youth to hard study, to the acquisition of knowledge which would increase their strength tenfold in the service of the same cause, and in the performance of the great works they aspire to. But to sacrifice those few years to study often proves too much for them.”

“أأنا أحبها؟ ومرة أخرى لم أستطع أن أجد لهذا السؤال جواباً، أو قل إنني أجبت للمرة المائة بأنني أكرهها ، نعم أكرهها. مرت بي لحظات وخاصة في ختام الأحاديث التي تقوم بيننا. تمنيت فيها أن أهب نصف عمري في سبيل أن أخنقها أقسم أنه لو في وسعي أن أغمد خنجراً مسنوناً في صدرها على مهل، لشعرت من ذلك بمتعة فيما أظن. ومع ذلك أقسم بأقدس ما أقدّس أنني لو طلبت مني ونحن على جبل شلانجنبرج، أن ألقي بنفسي من أعلى قمة يرتادها الناس، لرميت نفسي فوراً ولشعرت من ذلك بغبطة. دوستويفسكي / المقامر”

“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.”

“He bent his head towards his shoulder and tried to look pitiful and humble, but for all that he was radiant with freshness and health.”

“But what do you say to this argument (help me with it): ghosts are, as it were, shreds and fragments of other worlds, the beginning of them. A man in health has, of course, no reason to see them, because he is above all a man of this earth and is bound for the sake of completeness and order to live only in this life. But as soon as one is ill, as soon as the normal earthly order of the organism is broken, one begins to realise the possibility of another world; and the more seriously ill one is, the closer becomes one’s contact with that other world, so that as soon as the man dies he steps straight into that world. I thought of that long ago. If you believe in a future life, you could believe in that, too.”

“My personal life is as monotonous as ever; but they have given me permission to walk in the garden, where there are almost seventeen trees ! This is a great happiness for me. Moreover, I am given a candle in the evenings—that's my second piece of luck. The third will be mine if you answer as soon as possible, and send me the next number of the 0. Z. I am in the same position as a country subscriber, and await each number as a great event, like some landed proprietor dying of boredom in the provinces. Will you send me some historical works ? That would be splendid. But best of all would be the Bible (both Testaments). I need one. Should it prove possible, send it in a French translation. But if you could add as well a Slav edition, it would be the height of bliss. Of”

“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.”

“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.”

“And in all of us, as well as in the aspens and clouds and nebulae, there was a process of evolution. Evolution from what? Into what?- Eternal evolution and struggle... As though there could be any sort of tendency and struggle in the eternal! And I was astonished that in spite of the utmost effort of thought in this direction I could not discover the meaning of life, the meaning of my impulses and yearnings. And the meaning of my impulses is so clear within me, that I was living according to them all the time, and I was astonished and rejoiced when the peasant expressed it to me: to live for God, for my soul.”

“Like busy bees in springtime, coming and going, sitting and standing, settling together and flying apart.”

“Мало того: если идея соединяется с сильным, страстным желанием, то, пожалуй, иной раз примешь её, наконец, за нечто фатальное, необходимое, предназначенное, за нечто такое, что уже не может не быть и не случиться!”

“You have a wholesome character, and you want all of life to made up of wholesome phenomena, but that doesn't happen... All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.”

“At the fact that I’m unable to think up a situation in which life would not be suffering, that we’re all created in order to suffer, and that we all know it and keep thinking up ways of deceiving ourselves. But if you see the truth, what can you do?”

“Not just one day, you will live many days,” the doctor would answer, “you will live months and years, too.” “But what are years, what are months!” he would exclaim. “Why count the days, when even one day is enough for a man to know all happiness. My dears, why do we quarrel, boast before each other, remember each other’s offenses? Let us go to the garden, let us walk and play and love and praise and kiss each other, and bless our life.” “He’s not long for this world, your son,” the doctor said to mother as she saw him to the porch, “from sickness he is falling into madness.”

“He was the familiar friend of everyone with whom he took a glass of champagne, and he took a glass of champagne with everyone,”

“Do not answer, be silent. After all, what could you say? I know too well what you would say. And you have no right to add anything to what you already said once.”

“Stepan Arkadyevitch, who liked a joke, was fond of puzzling a plain man by saying that if he prided himself on his origin, he ought not to stop at Rurik and disown the first founder of his family-- the monkey.”

“If the good has a cause, it is no longer the good; if it has a consequence - a reward - it is also not the good. Therefore the good is outside the chain of cause and effect.”

“When you've grasped the fact that today or tomorrow you will die and nothing will be left of you, everything becomes so insignificant.”

“Vengeance is mine. I will repay.”