Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“This soldier had been taken prisoner in some remote part of Asia, and was threatened with an immediate agonising death if he did not renounce Christianity and follow Islam.”

“It was as though her nature were so brimming over with something that against her will it expressed itself now in a radiant look, now in a smile. She deliberately shrouded the light in her eyes but in spite of herself it gleamed in the faintly perceptible smile.”

“It’s just the same story as a doctor once told me,” observed the elder. “He was a man getting on in years, and undoubtedly clever. He spoke as frankly as you, though in jest, in bitter jest. ‘I love humanity,’ he said, ‘but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams,’ he said, ‘I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually have faced crucifixion if it had been suddenly necessary; and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with any one for two days together, as I know by experience. As soon as any one is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.’ ”

“Там было все про любовь, там были одни только любовники, любовницы, преследуемые дамы, падающие без чувств в уединенных беседках, кучера, которых убивают на каждой станции, кони, которых загоняют на каждой странице, дремучие леса, сердечные тревоги, клятвы, рыдания, слезы и поцелуи, челны, озаренные лунным светом, соловьиное пение в рощах, герои, храбрые, как львы, кроткие, как агнцы, добродетельные донельзя, всегда безукоризненно одетые, слезоточивые, как урны.”

“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.”

“...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.”

“Yes, guilty!” And then it was the same on each point:”

“Anyway, I give you my blessing; see if you can get at the truth, and come back and tell me: after all, it’ll be easier to make the trip to the next world once you know for sure what’s there.”

“Life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we don't want to realize it, and if we did care to realize it, paradise would be established in all the world tomorrow.”

“She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into her eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people. ‘But it’s no use now,’ thought poor Alice, ‘to pretend to be two people! Why, there’s hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!”