Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky
“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.”
“Levin felt that in his soul, in the very bottom of his soul, his brother Nikolai, despite the ugliness of his life, was not more in the wrong than those who despised him.”
“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.”
“For an instant he was offended, but immediately knew he could not be offended with her because she was himself.”
topics: love
“But, my God!” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly cried out, clasping her hands. “And he! He could be so dishonest, so inhuman! He told”
“So much the worse for you!” he said mentally, like a man who, after vainly attempting to extinguish a fire, should fly in a rage with his vain efforts and say, “Oh, very well then! you shall burn for this!”
“Alyosha, was not at all a fanatic, and, in my view at least, even not at all a mystic. I will give my full opinion beforehand: he was simply an early lover of mankind,1 and if he threw himself into the monastery path, it was only because it alone struck him at the time and presented him, so to speak, with an ideal way out for his soul struggling from the darkness of worldly wickedness towards the light of love. And this path struck him only because on it at that time he met a remarkable being, in his opinion, our famous monastery elder Zosima, to whom he became attached with all the ardent first love of his unquenchable heart.”
“Kostia: When I'm mowing, I don't ask myself why I'm here. Theodore: You're here to be Master, Konstantin Dmitrievich. As it's always been, by the grace of God”
“I know your thoughts. Your heart is better than your head.”
“And you still did not think of washing your hands even as you entered Mr. Perkhotin’s? In other words, you were not afraid of arousing suspicion?”
“Hate not the atheists, the teachers of evil, the materialists- and I mean not only the good ones- for there are many good ones among them, especially in our day- hate not even the wicked ones.”
“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.”
“...страдание-то и есть жизнь. Без страдания какое было бы в ней удовольствие: всё обратилось бы в один бесконечный молебен: оно свято, но скучновато.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Братья Карамазовы
“Only a little tiny seed is needed—drop it into the heart of the peasant and it won’t die, it will live in his soul all his life, it will be hidden in the midst of his darkness and sin, like a bright spot, like a great reminder. And there’s no need of much teaching or explanation, he will understand it all simply.”
“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.”
“Here, brother, contempt is no use, even if he does despise Grushenka. He may despise her, but he still can’t tear himself away from her.”
“No, you have not, so as not to add to what has already been said once, and so as not to deprive people of freedom, for which you stood so firmly when you were on earth. Anything you proclaim anew will encroach upon the freedom of men’s faith, for it will come as a miracle, and the freedom of their faith was the dearest of all things to you, even then, one and a half thousand years ago. Was it not you who so often said then:”I want to make you free”?18”
“When she was given a kopeck, she would accept it and at once take it and put it in some poor box in the church or prison. When she was given a roll or a bun in the marketplace, she always went and gave this roll or bun to the first child she met, or else she would stop some one of our wealthiest ladies and give it to her; and the ladies would even gladly accept it. She herself lived only on black bread and water.”
“But, as so often happens, crimes committed with extraordinary boldness are more likely to succeed than any others.”
“As a child he was fond of hanging cats and then burying them with ceremony.”
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Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer, essayist and philosopher, perhaps most recognized today for his novels Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov.
Dostoyevsky's literary output explores human psychology in the troubled political, social and spiritual context of 19th-century Russian society. Considered by many as a founder or precursor of 20th-century existentialism, his Notes from Underground (1864), written in the embittered voice of the anonymous "underground man", was called by Walter Kaufmann the "best overture for existentialism ever written."
His tombstone reads "Verily, Verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." from John 12:24, which is also the epigraph of his final novel, The Brothers Karamazov.