Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Hay muchas personas mayores que se complacen en torturar a los niños, pero sólo a los niños. Con los adultos, tales individuos se muestran cariñosos y amables, como europeos cultos y humanitarios, pero experimentan un placer especial en hacer sufrir a los niños: es su modo de amarlos. La confianza angelical de estas indefensas criaturas seduce a las personas crueles. Estas personas no saben a dónde ir ni a quién dirigirse, y ello excita sus malos instintos. Todos los hombres llevan un demonio en su interior, hijo de un carácter colérico, del sadismo, de un desencantamiento de pasiones innobles, de enfermedades contraídas en un régimen de libertinaje, de la gota, del mal funcionamiento del hígado...”

“In order to refashion the world, it is necessary for people themselves to adopt a different mental attitude. Until man becomes brother unto man, there shall be no brotherhood of men. No kind of science or material advantage will ever induce people to share their property or their rights equitably. No one will ever have enough, people will always grumble, they will always envy and destroy one another. You ask when will all this come about. It will come about, but first there must be an end to the habit of self-imposed isolation of man.’ ‘What isolation?’ I asked him. ‘The kind that is prevalent everywhere now, especially in our age, and which has not yet come to an end, has not yet run its course. For everyone nowadays strives to dissociate himself as much as possible from others, everyone wants to savour the fullness of life for himself, but all his best efforts lead not to fullness of life but to total self-destruction, and instead of ending with a comprehensive evaluation of his being, he rushes headlong into complete isolation. For everyone has dissociated himself from everyone else in our age, everyone has disappeared into his own burrow, distanced himself from the next man, hidden himself and his possessions, the result being that he has abandoned people and has, in his turn, been abandoned. He piles up riches in solitude and thinks: ‘How powerful I am now, and how secure,’ and it never occurs to the poor devil that the more he accumulates, the further he sinks into suicidal impotence. For man has become used to relying on himself alone, and has dissociated himself from the whole; he has accustomed his soul to believe neither in human aid, nor in people, nor in humanity; he trembles only at the thought of losing his money* and the privileges he has acquired. Everywhere the human mind is beginning arrogantly to ignore the fact that man’s true security is to be attained not through the isolated efforts of the individual, but in a corporate human identity. But it is certain that this terrible isolation will come to an end, and everyone will realize at a stroke how unnatural it is for one man to cut himself off from another. This will indeed be the spirit of the times, and people will be surprised how long they have remained in darkness and not seen the light. It is then that the sign of the Son of man will appear in heaven…* But, nevertheless, until then man should hold the banner aloft and should from time to time, quite alone if necessary, set an example and rescue his soul from isolation in order to champion the bond of fraternal love, though he be taken for a holy fool. And he should do this in order that the great Idea should not die…”

“Would he purge his soul from vileness And attain to light and worth, He must turn and cling for ever, To his ancient Mother Earth.”

“And I seem to have such strength in me now, that I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, "I exist." In thousands of agonies一 I exist. I'm tormented on the rack一 but I exist! Though I sit alone on a pillar一 I exist! I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.”

“Se dice que todo esto es indispensable para que en la mente del hombre se establezca la distinción entre el bien y el mal. ¿Pero para qué queremos esta distinción diabólica pagada a tan alto precio? Toda la sabiduría del mundo es insuficiente para pagar las lágrimas de los niños. No hablo de los dolores morales de los adultos, porque los adultos han saboreado el fruto prohibido. ¡Que el diablo se los lleve! ¡Pero los niños...!”

“But wait, wait,” Ivan was laughing, “don’t get so excited. A fantasy, you say? Let it be. Of course it’s a fantasy. But still, let me ask: do you really think that this whole Catholic movement of the past few centuries is really nothing but the lust for power only for the sake of filthy lucre?”

“Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more. Such grief does not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense of its hopelessness. Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to reopen the wound.”

“And it was not that he seemed to have forgotten or intentionally forgiven the affront, but simply that he did not regard it as an affront”

“It’s true that he would come to himself at once, and yet, if he were asked what he had been thinking about while standing there, he would most likely not remember, but would most likely keep hidden away in himself the impression he had been under while contemplating. These impressions are dear to him, and he is most likely storing them up imperceptibly and even without realizing it—why and what for, of course, he does not know either; perhaps suddenly, having stored up his impressions over many years, he will drop everything and wander off to Jerusalem to save his soul, or perhaps he will suddenly burn down his native village, or perhaps he will do both. There are plenty of contemplators among the people. Most likely Smerdyakov, too, was such a contemplator, and most likely he, too, was greedily storing up his impressions, almost without knowing why himself.”

“if God didn’t exist, He would have to be invented.”

“Нет таких условий, к которым человек не мог бы привыкнуть, в особенности если он видит, что все окружающие его живут так же.”

“Above all, don’t lie to yourself." – Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov "I don’t want to die without any scars." – Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club "Not all those who wander are lost." – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring "It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not." – André Gide, Autumn Leaves "If you’re making mistakes it means you’re out there doing something." – Neil Gaiman, Make Good Art "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day." – Paulo Coelho, Brida "If we wait until we’re ready, we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives." – Lemony Snicket, The Ersatz Elevator "The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." – Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath "I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do." – Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart "If you don’t imagine, nothing ever happens at all." – John Green, Paper Towns "Everything is possible. The impossible just takes longer." – Dan Brown, Digital Fortress "Fear is an illusion..." - Dark Templar, Starcraft 2”

“It's life that matters, nothing but life - the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.”

“Does the fellow want his head smashed?”

“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!”

“آدم چه چیزها که نمی‌بیند. وقتی به خشم آمده‌ای دست به دشنه می‌بری یا اگر دشنه نداشتی با دست خالی با حریف گلاویز می‌شوی، مثل یک قوچ، به دیوار شاخ می‌زنی. می‌خواهی خرخره طرف را با دندان بجوی. اما حالا اگر حریف خودش خنجر به دستت بدهد و سینه‌اش را برایت لخت کند، دست از پا خطا نمی‌کنی.”

“I ragionamenti lo portavano a dubbi e gli impedivano di vedere quel che si doveva e quel che non si doveva fare. Quando invece non pensava, ma viveva, sentiva incessantemente nell'animo suo la presenza d'un giudice infallibile che decideva quale di due azioni possibili fosse migliore e quale peggiore, e, appena agiva non così come si doveva, lo sentiva immediatamente.”

“But there was a second kind of people, the real ones, to which they all belonged, for whom the main thing was to be elegant, beautiful, generous, bold, and gay, to give way unblushingly to every passion and to laugh at everything else.”

“And indeed, what is better than to sit by one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is burning?" "What, indeed?" she said, fixing her large black eyes wide open upon him. "One thinks of nothing," he continued; "the hours slip by. Motionless we traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blending with the fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were yourself palpitating beneath their costumes.”

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