Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“All the variety, charm and beauty of life are made up of light and shade.”

“The only happy marriages I know are marriages of prudence.”

“But he couldn’t remember immediately what he had been about to say. These fits of jealousy, which had been coming over her more and more often lately, horrified him, and no matter how he tried to conceal it, they made him cooler toward her, although he knew that the cause of her jealousy was her love for him. How many times had he told himself that her love was his happiness; and here she loved him as a woman can love for whom love outweighed every good in life—yet he was much farther from happiness than when he had followed her from Moscow. Then, he had counted himself unhappy, but happiness was ahead, and now he felt that the best happiness was already behind. She was not at all the way she had been when he had seen her the first time. Both morally and physically she had changed for the worse. She was much filled out, and her face, when she was talking about the actress, had a spiteful expression that distorted it. He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has plucked and in which he has trouble seeing the beauty that had led him to pluck and ruin it. He felt that when his love had been stronger he could have, if he had wanted to very much, torn that love out of his heart, but now, when at this moment he did not seem to feel any love for her, he knew that his tie to her could not be sundered.”

“Durante todo ese tiempo se debatió entre dos estados de ánimo distintos. Uno, lejos de Kitty, cuando estaba con el médico, que fumaba un grueso cigarrillo tras otro, apagándolos después en el borde del cenicero, lleno ya de colillas, o cuando charlaba con Dolly y con el príncipe, que le hablaban de comida, de política o de la enfermedad de Maria Petrovna. En tales ocasiones parecía olvidarse por un momento de lo que estaba sucediendo y tenía la sensación de haberse despertado de pronto. Otro, en presencia de Kitty, sentado a su cabecera. Entonces su corazón estaba a punto de estallar, henchido de compasión, y no paraba de suplicarle a Dios. Y, cada vez que en uno de esos momentos de olvido le llegaba un grito desde el dormitorio, volvía a incurrir en el mismo error en que había caído en el primer momento: se levantaba de un salto y corría a justificarse; pero por el camino recordaba que no tenía la culpa. Y entonces sentía deseos de defenderla, de ayudarla. Pero, cuando la veía, se daba cuenta de que no podía ayudarla y, horrorizado, repetía: "Señor, perdónanos y ayúdanos".”

“En ese momento no podía esperar nada más que falsedad y mentira. Y tanto la falsedad como la mentira le repugnaban por naturaleza.”

“Just as his bodily strength was still unaffected, in spite of the bees, so too was the spiritual strength that he had just become aware of.”

“She was one of those animals who, it seems, do not talk only because the mechanism of their mouths does not permit it.”

“From Varenka she understood that you had only to forget yourself and love others and you would be calm, happy and beautiful.”

“She lay for a long time motionless, her eyes open, and it seemed to her that she herself could see them shining in the darkness.”

“He prescribed more physical exercise as far as possible, and as far as possible less mental strain,”

“It’s worse for the guilty than the innocent”

“Он [Вронский] смотрел на людей, как на вещи. Молодой нервный человек, служащий в окружном суде, сидевший против него, возненавидел его за этот вид. Молодой человек и закуривал у него, и заговаривал с ним, и даже толкал его, чтобы дать ему почувствовать, что он не вещь, а человек, но Вронский смотрел на него все так же, как на фонарь, и молодой человек гримасничал, чувствуя, что он теряет самообладание под давлением этого непризнавания его человеком.”

“Он знал и чувствовал только, что то, что совершалось, было подобно тому, что совершалось год тому назад в гостинице губернского города на одре смерти брата Николая. Но то было горе, – это была радость. Но и то горе и эта радость одинаково были вне всех обычных условий жизни, были в этой обычной жизни как будто отверстия, сквозь которые показывалось что то высшее. И одинаково тяжело, мучительно наступало совершающееся, и одинаково непостижимо при созерцании этого высшего поднималась душа на такую высоту, которой она никогда и не понимала прежде и куда рассудок уже не поспевал за нею.”

“Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life's impossible; and that I can't know, and so I can't live," Levin said to himself. "In infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is formed a bubble-organism, and that bubble lasts a while and bursts, and that bubble is Me.”

“we have a palpable sense that Tolstoy as a novelist tests his characters’ muscles and trains his reader to track their spasms so that by the time we come to the meeting between Kitty and Levin we are able to share the latter’s understanding that what was inexpressible in words was given meaning in ‘every movement of her lips, her eyes, and her hands’. So Kitty’s nervousness at the outcome of her meeting with Levin is expressed in and heightened by the failure of her fork to spear a slippery pickled mushroom on her plate. A slight muscular reflex, such as Kitty’s hand in”

“(...) Evitando per un po' di guardarla, come si evita di guardare il sole; ma, come il sole, la vedeva senza guardarla.”

“This Mlle Varenka was not really past her first youth, but was, as it were, a being without youth: she might have been nineteen, she might have been thirty. If one studied her features, she was more beautiful than plain, despite her sickly complexion. She would also have been of good build, if it had not been for the excessive leanness of her body and a head much too large for her medium height; but she must not have been attractive to men. She was like a beautiful flower which, while still full of petals, is scentless and no longer blooming. Besides that, she also could not be attractive to men because she lacked what Kitty had in over-abundance - the restrained fire of life and an awareness of her attractiveness.”

“Stepan Arkadyich subscribed to and read a liberal newspaper,3 not an extreme one, but one with the tendency to which the majority held. And though neither science, nor art, nor politics itself interested him, he firmly held the same views on all these subjects as the majority and his newspaper did, and changed them only when the majority did, or, rather, he did not change them, but they themselves changed imperceptibly in him. Stepan Arkadyich chose neither his tendency nor his views, but these tendencies and views came to him themselves, just as he did not choose the shape of a hat or a frock coat, but bought those that were in fashion.”

“Reprimia o seu bom humor, como para mostrar que o perdão não lhe fazia esquecer as suas faltas.”

“Yes; God sends the cross and sends the strength to bear it. Often one wonders what is the goal of this life?… The other side!”