Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“ROSTROS He visto un rostro con mil semblantes, y un rostro que tenía sólo un semblante, como si estuviera contenido en un molde inmutable. He visto un rostro cuyo brillo podía ver a través de la fealdad que lo cubría, y un rostro cuyo brillo tuve que apartar, para ver cuán hermoso era. He visto un viejo rostro lleno de arrugas de la nada, y un rostro lozano en el que estaban grabadas todas las cosas. Conozco todos los rostros, porque los veo a través de la urdimbre que mis ojos van tejiendo, y miro la realidad que está detrás del tejido.”

“On awaking Oyvind looked around to find them all gone; then he remembered the day before, and the burning, cruel pain in his heart began at once. “This, I shall never be rid of again,” thought he; and there came over him a feeling of indifference, as though his whole future had dropped away from him.”

“To help you Nellie, and to look after you.” “Why? What for? I’ve never done anything like that for her.” “Kind people don’t wait for that, Nellie. They like to help people who need it, without that. That’s enough, Nellie; there are lots of kind people in the world. It’s only your misfortune that you haven’t met them and didn’t meet them when you needed them.”

“Nastasia Philipovna was quite capable of ruining herself, and even of perpetrating something which would send her to Siberia, for the mere pleasure of injuring a man for whom she had developed so inhuman a sense of loathing and contempt.”

“Yet such persons are, without us, what the ideal of perfection is within us: models not for being imitated, but for being aimed at.”

“when things are made awkward by people’s excessive compliance and submission, they are soon made unbearable by their excessive demandingness and fault-finding.”

“Y te preguntas «¿Dónde están tus sueños?». Y meneas la cabeza y te dices: «¡Qué rápido pasan los años!» Y de nuevo te preguntas «¿Y qué has hecho con tus años? ¿Dónde has enterrado tu mejor época? ¿Has o no vivido?»”

“İsteyerek soytarılık yapanlar, hiç de acınacak insanlar değillerdir.”

“se debe amar la vida por encima de todo.”

“çok bilen çabuk ihtiyarlar.”

“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...”

“There’s no point in trying to believe something against one’s will. Besides, in matters of faith, proof, especially material proof, is pretty useless. Thomas believed, not because he saw that Christ had risen, but because he had the will to believe beforehand.”

“в России пьяные люди у нас самые добрые. Самые добрые люди у нас и самые пьяные.”

“he did you; be reconciled with him truly. If you are repentant, it means that you love. And if you love, you already belong to God … With love everything is bought, everything is saved.”

“No woman will ever just forgive you for what you’ve done. First she’ll humiliate you as much as she can and remind you of all the mistakes you’ve ever made, and even of those you never made; she will forget nothing and add plenty, and only then will she forgive you.”

“Oh! no doubt, in the monastery he fully believed in miracles, but, to my thinking, miracles are never a stumbling-block to the realist.”

“Surely, when I’m dead, there’s no chance the devils will fail to drag me down with their hooks. So that gets me thinking: hooks? Where do they get them from? What are they made of? Iron? And where do they forge them? Have they got their own works down there, or what? The monks in your monastery probably suppose that hell comes with a roof, for instance. Now I’m ready to believe in hell, but it shouldn’t have a roof: it’s in better taste without one, more enlightened, Lutheran-like,* if you see what I mean. But really and truly, what does it matter, roof or no roof? But then, that’s what the whole damned question is all about! For if there’s no roof, it follows there can’t be any hooks either. And if there aren’t any hooks, then it’s all a sham, and it’s even harder to swallow: who’s going to drag me down with hooks then,”

“Hasta que no he estado aquí, entre estas degradantes paredes, no me he dado cuenta de lo que te acabo de revelar. En el mundo hay centenares de hombres que empuñan el martillo. Nosotros viviremos encadenados, privados de libertad, pero, por obra de nuestro dolor, resucitaremos a la alegría, esa alegría sin la que el hombre no puede vivir ni Dios existir, ya que es Él quien nos la da, porque este es su sublime privilegio.”

“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.’ ”

“That is a fact and it speaks, it shouts, for itself… but when it comes to inner feelings, that’s quite a different matter, gentlemen.”