Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky
“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.”
“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?”
“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.”
“But the more intensely he thought, the clearer it became to him that it was indubitably so, that in reality, looking upon life, he had forgotten one little fact—that death will come, and all ends; that nothing was even worth beginning, and that there was no helping it anyway. Yes, it was awful, but it was so. "But I am alive still. Now what's to be done? what's to be done?" he said in despair.”
“Levin took this occasion to convey to Yegor his thought that the main thing in marriage was love, and that with love one was always happy, because happiness exists only in oneself.”
“Başkalarını kendimi tanıdığım kadar tanımayı ne kadar isterdim.”
topics: sy-392
“Poor thing! She had loved him, after all.”
“L’amore, pensava, accade improvvisamente, con grandi accensioni e folgorazioni, – uragano dei cieli che precipita nella vita, la sconvolge, strappa via la volontà come una foglia e trascina interamente il cuore nell’abisso.”
topics: love
“C’était cette rêverie que l’on a sur ce qui ne reviendra plus, la lassitude qui vous prend après chaque fait accompli, cette douleur enfin que vous apportent l’interruption de tout mouvement accoutumé, la cessation brusque d’une vibration prolongée.”
“Je ne les ai pas ! répondit Rodolphe avec ce calme parfait dont se recouvrent comme d’un bouclier les colères résignées.”
“[...] perdu dans un de ces bonheurs complets, n'appartenant sans doute qu'aux occupations médiocres qui amusent l'intelligence par des difficultés faciles, et l'assouvissent en une réalisation au delà de laquelle il n'y a pas à rêver.”
“He was overwhelmed by the beauty of the world. Beside that nothing seemed to matter.”
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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.