Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky
“There is a sweetness in being the sole source, the autocratic and irresponsible cause of the greatest joy and profoundest pain to another, and I was like wax in Zinaïda's hands; though, indeed, I was not the only one in love with her. All the men who visited the house were crazy over her, and she kept them all in leading-strings at her feet. It amused her to arouse their hopes and then their fears, to turn them round her finger (she used to call it knocking their heads together), while they never dreamed of offering resistance and eagerly submitted to her. About her whole being, so full of life and beauty, there was a peculiarly bewitching mixture of slyness and carelessness, of artificiality and simplicity, of composure and frolicsomeness; about everything she did or said, about every action of hers, there clung a delicate, fine charm, in which an individual power was manifest at work. And her face was ever changing, working too; it expressed, almost at the same time, irony, dreaminess, and passion. Various emotions, delicate and quick-changing as the shadows of clouds on a sunny day of wind, chased one another continually over her lips and eyes.”
“El dolor y el sufrimiento son siempre inevitables para una gran inteligencia y un corazón profundo. Los hombres realmente grandes, creo, tienen una gran tristeza en la tierra.”
“خطر ببالي ذات يوم أنه إذا أريد إهلاك إنسان، ومعاقبته بفظاعة، وسحقه سحقًا شديدًا، حد أن يرتجف أمام هذا العقاب ويرتاع منه سلفًا حتى أعتى القتلة، يكفي أن تضفى على عمله صفة عدم الجدوى تمامًا، لا، بل بالعبثية.”
“Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Crime and Punishment
“Suffering and pain are always obligatory for a broad consciousness and a deep heart. Truly great men I think, must feel great sorrow in this world.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Crime and Punishment
topics: suffering
“I don’t understand anything...and I no longer want to understand anything. I want to stick to the fact...If I wanted to understand something, I would immediately have to betray the fact, but I’ve made up my mind to stick to the fact.”
“I swear to you, sirs, that excessive consciousness is a disease--a genuine, absolute disease.”
“But Levin was in love, and so it seemed to him that Kitty was so perfect in every respect that she was a creature far above everything earthly; and that he was a creature so low and so earthly that it could not even be conceived that other people and she herself could regard him as worthy of her.”
“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.”
“We degrade God too much, ascribing to him our ideas, in vexation at being unable to understand Him.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from The Idiot
“Be near your brothers. Not just one, but both of them.”
“As soon as you have finished telling us anything, you seem to be ashamed of what you've said," Aglaia observed suddenly. "Why is that?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from The Idiot
“كثير من البشر يتحول الاستدلال المنطقي عندهم أحيانا إلى عاطفة قوية تستولي على وجودهم كله، فيصعب جدا طردها أو تعديلها. فلكي نشفي إنسانا أصيب بهذا الداء يجب علينا أن نغير هذه العاطفة، و هذا لا يكون ممكنا إلا بأن نحل محل هذه العاطفة قوة أخرى تساويها”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from المراهق
“لماذا تبدو لهم فعلتي شاذة إلى هذا الحد؟ ألا انها جريمة؟ ماذا تعني كلمة جريمة؟ إن ضميري مرتاح. صحيح أن جريمة قد وقعت. صحيح أن نص القانون قد اخترق وأن دما قد سفك. فإذا كان الأمر أمر تقيد بنص القانون فأقطعوا رأسي ولنسكت ! ولكن يجب أن نذكر في هذه الحالة أن كثيرا من العظماء الذين احسنوا إلى الإنسانية ولم يكونوا قد ورثوا السلطة وراثة وإنما استولوا عليها إستيلاء. كان ينبغي أن تقطع رءوسهم منذ خطوا خطواتهم الأولى. أن الفرق الوحيد بين هؤلاء وبيني هو إنهم قد احتملوا ثقل أفعالهم فكان ذلك مبررا لهم، اما انا فلم أقدر على الصمود إذا كان لا يحق لي ان اجيز لنفسي القيام بتلك المحاولة.”
“Money is the honey of humanity.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Crime and Punishment
“Thus a man will sometimes suffer half an hour of mortal fear with a robber, but once the knife is finally at his throat, even fear vanishes.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Crime and Punishment
topics: life
“One day is enough for a man to know all happiness. My dear ones, why do we quarrel, try to outshine each other and keep grudges against each other? Let's go straight into the garden, walk and play there, love, appreciate each other and glorify life.”
“They were given paradise, they wanted freedom, and stole fire from heaven, though they knew that they would become unhappy.”
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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.