Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I must tell vou, Gavril Ardalionovitch,” Mvshkin said suddenly, “that I was once so ill that I really was almost an idiot; but I’ve got over that long ago, and so I rather dislike it when people call me an idiot to my face. Though I can excuse it in you in consideration of your ill-luck, but in your vexation you’ve been abusive to me twice already. I don’t like that at all, especially so suddenly at first acquaintance; and so, as we are just at the crossroads, hadn’t we better part? You go to the right to your home, and I go to the left. I’ve got twenty-five roubles, and I shall be sure to find some lodging-house.”

“İnsan, şeytanın yanına yaklaşmasına izin verdi mi, artık iradesi üzerindeki denetimini kaybeder. Gözleri kapanır; iyiyle kötüyü, doğruyla yanlışı ayıramaz olur.”

“And then what happens to all of us every day happened to him—he fell asleep without knowing himself when or how. He passed from one state into another without his will having any share in it, without even desiring it, and without regretting the state out of which he had passed. He fell into a heavy sleep which was like death. How long he had slept he did not know, but he was suddenly aroused by the soft touch of a hand upon his shoulder. “It is my darling, it is she,” he thought. “What a shame to have dozed off!” But it was not she. Before his eyes, which were wide open and blinking at the light, she, that charming and beautiful creature whom he was expecting, did not stand, but he stood. Who he was the young Tsar did not know, but somehow it did not strike him that he was a stranger whom he had never seen before.”

“It is true, perhaps, that this instrument which had stood the test of a thousand years for the moral regeneration of a man from slavery to freedom and to moral perfectibility may be a two-edged weapon and it may lead some not to humility and complete self-control but to the most Satanic pride, that is, to bondage and not to freedom. The”

“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'.”

“[The Devil] And after all, who knows whether proof of the devil is also proof of God? I want to join an idealist society and form an opposition within it: 'I'm a realist,' I'll say, 'not a materialist,' heh, heh!”

“But she immediately turned away to Princess Marya Borisovna and never once glanced at him until he got up to leave; then she looked at him, but obviously only because it was impolite not to look at a man when he was bowing to you.”

“He’s in the right, he’s in the right!” she muttered; “of course he always is in the right, he is a Christian, he is magnanimous! Yes, a mean, horrid man! And no one but I understands or will understand it, and I cannot explain it. They say he’s a religious, moral, honest, and wise man, but they do not see what I have seen. They do not know how for eight years he has been smothering my life, smothering everything that was alive in me, that he never once thought I was a live woman, in need of love. They do not know how at every step he hurt me and remained self-satisfied. Have I not tried to love him, tried to love my son when I could no longer love my husband? But the time came when I understood that I could no longer deceive myself, that I am alive, and cannot be blamed because God made me so, that I want to love and to live.” … “And he knows it all; knows that I cannot repent of breathing, of loving, knows that nothing but lies and deception can come of this arrangement, but he wants to continue to torture me. I know him; I know that he swims and delights in falsehood as a fish in water. But no! I will not give him that pleasure, come what will. I will break this web of lies in which he wishes to entangle me. Anything is better than lies and deception!”

“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.”

“Is there a line to be drawn between psychological and physiological phenomena in man? and if so, where?”

“Birthdays are of no importance to a rational being. It’s a day like any other on which one has to do one’s work.”

“Alyosha exclaimed. “I think that everyone should love life before everything else in the world.” “Love life more than its meaning?” “Certainly, love it before logic, as you say, certainly before logic, and only then will I also understand its meaning.”

“His father always talked to him—so Seryozha felt—as though he were addressing some boy of his own imagination, one of those boys that exist in books, utterly unlike himself. And Seryozha always tried with his father to act being the story-book boy.”

“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.”

“Don't steal the rolls!”

“His mother, a dried-up old lady with black eyes and ringlets, screwed up her eyes, scanning her son, and smiled slightly with her thin lips. Getting up from the seat and handing her maid a bag, she gave her little wrinkled hand to her son to kiss, and lifting his head from her hand, kissed him on the cheek.”

“...that religion is only a curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of the people”

“I know a gallant steed by tokens sure,      And by his eyes I know a youth in love,”

“Well, let’s go! And we go like this now, hand in hand.” “And eternally so, all our lives hand in hand! Hurrah for Karamazov!” Kolya cried once more ecstatically, and once more all the boys joined in his exclamation.”

“... to celebrate my first hour of freedom. It's been going on nearly six months, and all at once I've thrown it off. I could never have guessed, even yesterday how easy it would be to put an end to it if I wanted.”