Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky
“I have a dream about devils, it seems to be night, I’m in my room with a candle, and suddenly there are devils everywhere, in all the corners, and under the tables, and they open the door, and outside the door there’s a crowd of them, and they want to come in and grab me. And they’re coming close, they’re about to grab me. But I suddenly cross myself and they all draw back, afraid, only they don’t quite go away, they stand by the door and in the corners, waiting. And suddenly I have a terrible desire to start abusing God out loud, and so I start abusing him, and they suddenly rush at me again in a crowd, they’re so glad, and they’re grabbing me again, and I suddenly cross myself again—and they all draw back. It’s such terrible fun; it takes my breath away.”
“Heavy burdens are not for everyone, for some they are impossible … These are my thoughts, if you need them so much.”
“Oh, we will allow them to sin, too; they are weak and powerless, and they will love us like children for allowing them to sin. We will tell them that every sin will be redeemed if it is committed with our permission; and that we allow them to sin because we love them, and as for the punishment for these sins, very well, we take it upon ourselves.”
“Gentlemen, that’s enough to make an angel out of patience!”
“His wife, however, happened to be the only woman in his life who failed totally to arouse any passion in him whatsoever.”
“My poem is called ‘The Grand Inquisitor’—an absurd thing, but I want you to hear it.”
“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!”
“I came with horror to the conclusion that, if anything could dissipate my love to humanity, it would be ingratitude. In short, I am a hired servant, I expect my payment at once—that is, praise, and the repayment of love with love. Otherwise I am incapable of loving any one.”
“..such a cross is too much for you. You wanted to regenerate another man in yourself through suffering; I say just remember that other man always, all your life, and wherever you escape to--and that is enough for you.”
“We will allow or forbid them to live with their wives and mistresses, to have or not to have children—all depending on their obedience—and they will submit to us gladly and joyfully.”
“to seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight.”
“God created light on the first day, and the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day. Where did the light come from on the first day?" Grigory was thunderstruck. The boy looked sarcastically at his teacher. There was something positively condescending in his expression. Grigory could not restrain himself. "I'll show you where!" he cried, and gave the boy a violent slap on the cheek. The boy took the slap without a word,”
“That kind always has the public good as a motive to justify every abomination.”
“Hm… yes, all is in a man’s hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that’s an axiom.”
“Don’t tell me! You’re just rubbing it in! It serves me right, though: it was vanity that kept me from coming, egoistic vanity and base despotism, which I haven’t been able to get rid of all my life, though all my life I’ve been trying to break myself.”
“It's not that I don't accept God, you must understand, it's the world created by Him I don't and cannot accept.”
“And what is the use of Christ's words, unless we set an example?”
“¿Será verdad, como dice la religiòn que resucitaremos de entre los muertos, que volveremos a vernos los unos a los otros, que veremos a todos?. Resucitaremos sin falta, nos veremos sin falta y con gozo y alegría nos contaremos los unos a los otros todo lo que nos haya sucedido. ¡Oh, qué hermoso será".”
“I love mankind,' he said, 'but I marvel at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love human beings in particular, separately, that is, as individual persons.”
“I MUST make one confession” Ivan began. “I could never understand how one can love one’s neighbours.”
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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.