Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Crime and Punishment
“The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.”
“I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and we’re both unhappy, and we both suffer.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from The Idiot
“He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.”
“Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget...”
“An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.”
“You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes.”
“And what's strange, what would be marvelous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man.”
“Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn?" Marmeladov’s question came suddenly into his mind "for every man must have somewhere to turn...”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Crime and Punishment
“Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it." - Vronksy {Anna Karenina}”
“There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery. If there is a hundredth of a fraction of a false note to candor, it immediately produces dissonance, and as a result, exposure. But in flattery, even if everything is false down to the last note, it is still pleasant, and people will listen not without pleasure; with coarse pleasure, perhaps, but pleasure nevertheless. ”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Crime and Punishment
“All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.”
“Love all God’s creation, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing. If thou love each thing thou wilt perceive the mystery of God in all; and when once thou perceive this, thou wilt thenceforward grow every day to a fuller understanding of it: until thou come at last to love the whole world with a love that will then be all-embracing and universal.”
topics: love
“I used to imagine adventures for myself, I invented a life, so that I could at least exist somehow.”
“Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Crime and Punishment
“Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education.”
topics: prayer
“Existentialism isn't so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn't exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing.”
“كان يحبها كثيرا ولكنه كان يكره ذلك الافراط السخيف في إظهار المشاعر كان يكره تلك العواطف التي تشبه عواطف العجول”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from الإخوة كارامزوف
“بكوا في أول الأمر ثم ألفوا وتعودوا. إن الإنسان يعتاد كل شيء. يا له من حقير”
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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.