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.”
“Dacă Semion Ivanovici nu izbutea să convieţuiască în bună înţelegere cu lumea – aceasta se datora numai şi numai lui. Lucrul de căpetenie, care atrăsese atenţia tuturor, fusese, fără îndoială, zgârcenia, cărpănoşia lui Semion Ivanovici. Această trăsătură de caracter fusese numaidecât prinsă de toţi şi luată în considerare, fiindcă Semion Ivanovici – pentru nimic în lume – nu împrumuta nimănui, în nici un chip, ceainicul: chiar pentru un timp cât de scurt. Era cu atât mai nedrept în această privinţă, cu cât el însuşi nu bea ceai aproape deloc.”
“Not long ago I read the criticism made by a German who had lived in Russia, on our students and schoolboys of to-day. 'Show a Russian schoolboy,' he writes, 'a map of the stars, which he knows nothing about, and he will give you back the map next day with corrections on it.' No knowledge and unbounded conceit- that's what the German meant to say about the Russian schoolboy.”
“Hadden zij elkaar niets anders te zeggen? Hun blikken spraken toch een veel ernstiger taal; en terwijl zij zochten naar alledaagse zinsneden, voelden beiden hoe eenzelfde verlangen zich van hen meester maakte: iets als een fluisteren van de ziel, diep en aanhoudend, dat hun woorden overstemde. Verrast en verbaasd als zij waren over deze ongekende weelde, kwam het niet in hen op deze gewaarwording voor elkaar uit te spreken of om zich te verdiepen in de oorzaak hiervan. Want als een geurige bries over tropische stranden zendt toekomstig geluk zijn eerste genietingen uit naar de ruimten die zich daarvoor uitstrekken; hierdoor verzinkt men in een roes en vergeet zelfs de einder, die in nevel blijft gehuld.”
“Othello was not jealous, he was trustful,” observed Pushkin.”
“Believe me, my friends, it is with talents as with virtue; one must love them for their own sake, or entirely renounce them. And neither of them is acknowledged and rewarded, except when their possessor can practise them unseen, like a dangerous secret.”
“The poet replied: “I always am, my child; you will be too in a few years. While one is climbing the ladder, one sees the top and feels hopeful; but when one has reached that summit, one sees the descent and the end which is death. It is slow work ascending, but one descends rapidly. At your age one is joyous; one hopes for many things which never come to pass. At mine, one expects nothing but death.”
“Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete”
“Para el realista no es la fe lo que nace del milagro, sino el milagro el que nace de la fe.”
“Ahelyett, hogy birtokba vetted volna az emberek szabadságát, még nagyobbra növelted! Vagy elfelejtetted, hogy az ember a nyugalmat, sőt akár a halált is többre becsüli, mint a szabad választást a jó és a gonosz megismerésében? Nincsen csábítóbb az ember számára, mint lelkiismeretének szabadsága, de nincs gyötrelmesebb sem.”
topics: freedom
“...for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all... But active love is labor and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science.”
“bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn’t it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea—he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility …”
“I could never understand how one can love one’s neighbours. It’s just one’s neighbours, to my mind, that one can’t love, though one might love those at a distance. I”
“Az a förtelmes mocsár, amelybe önszántából belesüllyedt, túlságosan nyomasztotta, és mint ilyen esetben nagyon sokan, ő is a helyváltoztatásban bízott a leginkább: csak ne ezek az emberek, csak ne ezek a körülmények, csak elrepülni erről az átkozott helyről - és minden újjászületik, másképp alakul!”
“I would be offended if he were not jealous. I am like that. I am not offended at jealousy.”
“Añade que le he querido durante una hora, sólo durante una hora; pero que se acuerde siempre de esta hora. Y”
“... even the martyr loves sometimes to have fun with it's desperation, and that is, again, from desperation.”
“But hesitation, anxiety, the struggle between belief and disbelief—all that is sometimes such a torment for a conscientious man like yourself, that it’s better to hang oneself. Precisely because I knew you had a tiny bit of belief in me, I let in some final disbelief, by telling you that anecdote. I’m leading you alternately between belief and disbelief, and I have my own purpose in doing so. A new method, sir: when you’ve completely lost faith in me, then you’ll immediately start convincing me to my face that I am not a dream but a reality—I know you now; and then my goal will be achieved. And it is a noble goal. I will sow a just a tiny seed of faith in you, and from it an oak will grow—and such an oak that you, sitting in that oak, will want to join ‘the desert fathers and the blameless women’; because secretly you want that ver-ry, ver-ry much, you will dine on locusts, you will drag yourself to the desert to seek salvation!”
“People should be nourished like children, and some of them like the patients in the hospitals.”
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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.