Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky
“My friends," I said, "you really do not care one way or the other." They were not offended, but they laughed at me. That was because I spoke without any not of reproach, simply because it did not matter to me. They saw it did not, and it amused them.”
“He knew that an apple should not be plucked while it is green. It will fall of itself when ripe, but if picked unripe the apple is spoiled, the tree is harmed, and your teeth are set on edge.”
“People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us.”
“En este encierro, hermano mío, he sentido nacer en mí un nuevo ser. En mí existía un hombre nuevo que sólo podía manifestarse bajo el azote del infortunio. ¿Qué puede importarme trabajar hasta la extenuación en las minas durante veinte años? Esto no me asusta; lo que temo es otra cosa: que el hombre que acaba de nacer en mí me abandone...”
“Para el realista no es la fe lo que nace del milagro, sino el milagro el que nace de la fe.”
“But only one who can appease their conscience can take over their freedom.”
“Mi opinión es que los hombres se dividen, en general y de acuerdo con el orden de la naturaleza, en dos categorías: una inferior, la de los individuos ordinarios, es decir la gran mayoría cuya única misión es reproducir seres semejantes a ellos, y otra superior, la de los verdaderos hombres, los individuos extraordinarios, que se complacen en dejar oír en su medio “palabras nuevas”. Naturalmente, hay infinitas subdivisiones, pero los rasgos fundamentales de las dos categorías son, a mi entender, bastante claros. La primera categoría se compone de hombres conservadores, muy prudentes, que viven en la obediencia, porque esta obediencia los hace feliz. Y a mí me parece que ellos están obligados a obedecer, porque este es su papel en la vida y ellos no ven nada humillante en desempeñarlo. Los hombres de la segunda categoría, todos ellos, quiebran las leyes, o, al menos, tienden a violarlas constantemente.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Crimen y Castigo
topics: category-of-people
“Love the animals: God gave them the rudiments of thought and an untroubled joy.”
“The old doctor who used to cure all sorts of disease has completely disappeared, I assure you, now there are only specialists and they all advertise in the newspapers”
“¿Comprende usted lo que significa no tener adónde ir?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Crime and Punishment
“If around you men are malicious and unfeeling and unwilling to listen to you, then fall down before them and beg them for forgiveness, for verily you are guilty of the fact that they do not want to listen to you.”
“My dear Mina, why are men so noble when we women are so little worthy of them? Here was I almost making fun of this great hearted, true gentleman. I burst into tears, I am afraid, my dear, you will think this a very sloppy letter in more ways than one, and I really felt very badly. Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?”
“Душа ее, сломленная гордыней, находила успокоение в христианской кротости. Наслаждаясь собственной слабостью, Эмма смотрела на свое безволие, как на широкие врата, через которые в нее войдет благодать. Значит, есть же на земле неизреченные блаженства, и перед ними земное счастье - прах, есть любовь превыше всякой другой, любовь непрерывная, бесконечная, неуклонно растущая! Лелея обманчивые надежды, Эмма представляла себе, что душа человеческая, достигнув совершенства, способна воспарить над землею и слиться с небесами. И она мечтала об этом. Ей хотелось стать святой. Она купила себе четки, стала носить ладанки; она думала о том, как хорошо было бы повесить у себя в комнате над изголовьем усыпанный изумрудами ковчежец и каждый вечер прикладываться к нему.”
“man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity.”
“seconded her efforts by meekly crawling along on his knees.”
“But scales hung before me and obscured my mind. Fateful, terrible scales! How did it come about that all this fell from my eyes, that all of a sudden I saw the light and understood everything?”
“And then, however limited his sphere, he still preserves in his bosom the sweet feeling of liberty, and knows that he can quit his prison whenever he likes.”
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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.