Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“In her view the aim of every religion was merely to preserve certain proprieties while affording satisfaction to human desires”

“I don’t want every one to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.”

“Napoleon's historian Thiers, like other of his historians, trying to justify his hero says that he was drawn to the walls of Moscow against his will. He is as right as other historians who look for the explanation of historic events in the will of one man; he is as right as the Russian historians who maintain that Napoleon was drawn to Moscow by the skill of”

“We should daily repeat to ourselves," I exclaimed, "that we should not interfere with our friends, unless to leave them in possession of their own joys, and increase their happiness by sharing it with them!”

“A good chessplayer having lost a game is sincerely convinced that his loss resulted from a mistake he made and looks for that mistake in the opening, but forgets that at each stage of the game there were similar mistakes and that none of his moves were perfect. He only notices the mistake to which he pays attention, because his opponent took advantage of it. How much more complex than this is the game of war, which occurs under certain limits of time, and where it is not one will that manipulates lifeless objects, but everything results from innumerable conflicts of various wills!”

“I also learned to cook; for much was to be seen in cookery. To cut up a hen, a pig, was quite a feast for me. I used to bring the entrails to my father, and he talked with me about them, as if I had been a student of anatomy. With suppressed joy, he would often call me his misfashioned son.”

“knowest not what thou sayest. I am but an ignorant man myself.” “Yes, yes,” says he, “you teachee me good, you teachee them good.” “No, no, Friday,” says I, “you shall go without me; leave me here to live by myself, as I did before.” He looked confused again at that word, and running to one of the hatchets which he used to wear, he takes it up hastily, comes and gives it to me. “What must I do with this?” says I to him. “You take kill Friday,” says he. “What must I kill you for?” said I again. He returns very quick, “What you send Friday away for? Take kill Friday, no send Friday away.” This he spoke so earnestly that I saw tears stand in his eyes. In a word, I so plainly discovered the utmost affection in him to me, and a firm resolution in him, that I told him then, and often after, that I would never send him away from me if he was willing to stay with me. Upon the whole, as I found by all his discourse a settled affection to me, and that nothing should part him from me, so I found all the foundation of his desire to go to his own country was laid in his ardent affection to the people, and his hopes of my doing them good; a thing which, as I had no notion of myself, so I had not the least thought or intention or desire of undertaking it. But still I found a strong inclination to my attempting an escape, as above, founded on the supposition gathered from the discourse, viz., that there were seventeen bearded men there; and, therefore, without any more delay I went to work with Friday, to find out a great tree proper to fell, and make a large periagua, or canoe, to undertake the voyage. There were trees enough in the island to have built a little fleet, not of periaguas and canoes, but even of good large vessels. But the main thing I looked at was, to get one so near the water that we might launch it when it”

“It was the tragic part of happiness; one’s right was always made of the wrong of some one else.”

“a character exposed to those strongest of all influences: the intrigues, flattery, and self-deception inseparable from power;”

“I don’t think I know what you mean,” she said; “you use too many figures of speech; I could never understand allegories. The two words in the language I most respect are Yes and No.”

“we must inevitably assume that the historian who judges Alexander will also after the lapse of some time turn out to be mistaken in his view of what is good for humanity.”

“Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship By J. W. von Goethe”

“The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with the young yellow-brown foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white star-flowers and the blue-eyed speedwell and the ground ivy at my feet, what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid broad-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate fibres within me as this home scene? These familiar flowers, these well-remembered bird-notes, this sky, with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows,–such things as these are the mother-tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle, inextricable associations the fleeting hours of our childhood left behind them. Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, and transform our perception into love.”

“They were a set of clever, strong-headed, lively geniuses, who saw well enough that the sum of our existence, divided by reason, never gives an integer number, but that a surprising fraction is always left behind.”

“let this little book be thy friend, if, owing to fortune or through thine own fault, thou canst not find a dearer companion.”

“Then Marit laughed and said, — “He is the son of the houseman at Pladsen.” Oyvind had always known that he was a houseman’s son; but until now he had never realized it. It made him feel so very little, smaller than all the rest; in order to keep up he had to try and think of all that hitherto had made him happy and proud, from the coasting hill to each kind word. He thought, too, of his mother and his father, who were now sitting at home and thinking that he was having a good time, and he could scarcely hold back his tears”

“When a nation which has long groaned under the intolerable yoke of a tyrant rises at last and throws off its chains, do you call that weakness? The man who, to rescue his house from the flames, finds his physical strength redoubled, so that he lifts burdens with ease which in the absence of excitement he could scarcely move; he who under the rage of an insult attacks and puts to flight half a score of his enemies,—are such persons to be called weak? My good friend, if resistance be strength, how can the highest degree of resistance be a weakness?”

“God of heaven! and is this the destiny of man? Is he only happy before he has acquired his reason or after he has lost it?”

“Ο πατέρας του του μιλούσε -έτσι αισθανόταν ο Σιεριόζα- μ' ένα ύφος σάμπως ν' αποτεινόταν σε κάποιο φανταστικό παιδί, σ' ένα από κείνα τα παιδιά που βρίσκουμε στα βιβλία, μα που δεν είχε καμία απολύτως ομοιότητα με τον Σιεριόζα. Κι ο μικρός όταν βρισκόταν με τον πατέρα του, προσπαθούσε να προσποιείται πως ήταν ένα τέτοιο παιδί των βιβλίων.”

“There was not a single cross or worried-looking face. All seemed to have left their cares and anxieties in the porter’s room with their hats, and were all deliberately getting ready to enjoy the material blessings of life.”