Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The emptier a man's head is, for instance, the less he fells the thirst to fill it.”

“A husband ought to live at home, and not in a crocodile...”

“Yes, she's rather good-looking; I think she's good-looking. After all, she drives other men out of their mind. She's tall and svelte. Only she's very thin. I think you could tie her in a knot or bend her double.”

“Di me le dirò che sono figlio del mio secolo, figlio della miscredenza e del dubbio, e non solo fino ad oggi, ma tale resterò (lo so con certezza) fino alla tomba. Quali terribili sofferenze mi è costata – e mi costa tuttora – questa sete di credere, che tanto più fortemente si fa sentire nella mia anima quando più forti mi appaiono gli argomenti ad essa contrari! Ciononostante Iddio mi manda talora degl’istanti in cui mi sento perfettamente sereno; in quegli istanti io scopro di amare e di essere amato dagli altri, e appunto in quegl’istanti io ho concepito un simbolo della fede, un Credo, in cui tutto per me è chiaro e santo. Questo Credo è molto semplice, e suona così: credere che non c’è nulla di più bello, di più profondo, più simpatico, più ragionevole, più virile e più perfetto di Cristo; anzi non soltanto non c’è, ma addirittura, con geloso amore, mi dico che non ci può essere. Non solo, ma arrivo a dire che se qualcuno mi dimostrasse che Cristo è fuori dalla verità e se fosse effettivamente vero che la verità non è in Cristo, ebbene io preferirei restare con Cristo piuttosto che con la verità.”

“Prisons and penal servitude do not of course rehabilitate the criminal; they merely punish him and ensure that society is kept safe from further attacks. The only effect of prison[s] is to generate hatred, the desire for forbidden pleasures and a terrifying frivolousness. But I am firmly convinced that the much acclaimed system of shutting people up in cells can only achieve false, spurious and superficial results. It is a system that sucks the lifeblood from the criminal, enervates his spirit, and then holds up a morally desiccated mummy as a model of rehabilitation and repentance. - The House of the Dead (1862)”

“El origen de la mayor parte de nuestros animales domésticos, probablemente quedará siempre dudoso. Pero puedo decir que, considerando los perros domésticos de todo el mundo, después de una laboriosa recopilación de todos los datos conocidos, he llegado a la conclusión de que han sido amansadas varias especies salvajes de cánidos, y que su sangre, mezclada en algunos casos, corre por las venas de nuestras razas domésticas.”

“Emaux et Camees, Charpentier's Japanese-paper edition, with”

“O tempo e o trabalho fizeram no entanto a sua obra; as impressões desagradáveis foram-se pouco a pouco apagando diante de acontecimentos importantes- apesar da sua aparência modesta- da vida do campo; cada semana lhe levava alguma coisa das recordações de Kitty; chegou mesmo a esperar com impaciência a notícia do casamento dela, esperando que essa notícia o curasse pela mesma forma que um dente que se arranca.”

“He felt this at the mere sight of Ignat and the horses; but when he had put on the sheepskin brought for him, had sat down wrapped up in the sledge, and had driven off pondering on the work that lay before him in the village, and staring at the side-horse, that had been his saddle-horse, past his prime now, but a spirited beast from the Don, he began to see what had happened to him in quite a different light. He felt himself, and did not want to be any one else. All he wanted now was to be better than before. In the first place he resolved that from that day he would give up hoping for any extraordinary happiness, such as marriage must have given him, and consequently he would not so disdain what he really had.”

“Después de largos años de vida, he hallado en usted lo que buscaba. La amo y le ofrezco mi nombre.» Así”

“placed in his special place.”

“On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature. Millions of men perpetrated against one another such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts, forgeries, issues of false money, burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders as in whole centuries are not recorded in the annals of all the law courts of the world, but which those who committed them did not at the time regard as being crimes.”

“Sviazhsky was one of those people, always a source of wonder to Levin, whose convictions, very logical though never original, go one way by themselves, while their life, exceedingly definite and firm in its direction, goes its way quite apart and almost always in direct contradiction to their convictions.”

“It is one of the most detestable habits of a Liliputian mind to credit other people with its own malignant pettiness.”

“If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no wars," he said.”

“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.”

“And to a place I come where nothing shines.”

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

“Our fatherland is suffering, not from the incursion of a score of alien tongues, but from our own acts, in that, in addition to the lawful administration, there has grown up a second administration possessed of infinitely greater powers than the system established by law.”

“Men should be taught as if you taught them not, And things unknown propos’d as things forgot;”