Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“[H]e was soon to be head clerk; it was time to settle down. So he gave up his flute, exalted sentiments, and poetry; for every bourgeois in the flush of his youth, were it but for a day, a moment, has believed himself capable of immense passions, of lofty enterprises. The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of sultanas; every notary bears within him the debris of a poet.”

“The very nastiest and coarsest, I can't tell you. It is not grief, not dullness, but much worse. It is as if all that was good in me had hidden itself, and only what is horrid remains.”

“Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she would say to him, but she did not succeed in saying anything of it; his passion mastered her. She tried to calm him, to calm herself, but it was too late. His feeling infected her. Her lips trembled so that for a long while she could say nothing." "Yes, you have conquered me, and I am yours," she said at last, pressing his hands to her bosom. "So it had to be," he said. "So long as we live, it must be so. I know it now.”

“Blessed are the peacemakers; theirs is the kingdom of heaven”

“I've always wanted all or nothing!”

“لن يشجعك رفاقك الآتون، ولن يواسوك. لن يدلوك على ما فيك من عناصر الخير والصدق. بالعكس.. سيحصون عليك كل غلطة، ولن يروا غير عيوبك، ولن يبينوا لك إلا ما أنت فيه مخطئ، سيفعلون ذلك وفي نفوسهم فرح خبيث. وإذا تظاهروا لك بأنهم لا يحفلون بأمرك بل يزدرون شأنك، كانوا في الحقيقة يفرحون لكل ما تقع فيه من أخطاء (كأن الإنسان معصوم من الخطأ!).”

“Speech is a rolling-mill that always thins out the sentiment.”

“Levin had often noticed in arguments between even the most intelligent people that after enormous efforts, an enormous number of logical subtleties and words, the arguers would finally come to the awareness that what they had spent so long struggling to prove to each other had been known to them long, long before, from the beginning of the argument, but that they loved different things and therefore did not want to name what they loved, so as not to be challenged. He had often felt that sometimes during an argument you would understand what your opponent loves, and suddenly come to love the same thing yourself, and agree all at once, and then all reasonings would fall away as superfluous; and sometimes it was the other way round: you would finally say what you yourself love, for the sake of which you are inventing your reasonings, and if you happened to say it well and sincerely, the opponent would suddenly agree and stop arguing. That was the very thing he wanted to say.”

“The enthusiasm of today’s youth is as pure and bright as it was in our time. Only one thing has happened: a shift of goals, the replacement of one beauty with another! The entire misunderstanding lies merely in the question of which is more beautiful: Shakespeare or a pair of boots, Raphael or petroleum?”

“وثمة شئ آخر ظل يعذبني، وهو هذا بالضبط : إن ما من أحدٍ كان يشبهني، وما شبهت أنا أحداً”

“Dreams, as we all know, are very curious things: certain incidents in them are presented with quite uncanny vividness, each detail executed with the finishing touch of a jeweller, while others you leap across as though entirely unaware of, for instance, space and time. Dreams seem to be induced not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and yet what clever tricks my reason has sometimes played on me in dreams!”

“Nothing but ambition, nothing but the desire to get on, that's all there is in his soul," she thought; "as for these lofty ideals, love of culture, religion, they are only so many tools for getting on.”

“She saw that they felt themselves alone in that crowded room. And Vronsky’s face, always so firm and independent, held that look that had struck her, of bewilderment and humble submissiveness, like the expression of an intelligent dog when it has done wrong. Anna smiled, and her smile was reflected by him. She grew thoughtful, and he became serious. Some supernatural force drew Kitty’s eyes to Anna’s face. She was enchanting in her simple black dress, enchanting were her round arms with their bracelets, enchanting was her firm neck with its thread of pearls, fascinating the straying curls of her loose hair, enchanting the graceful, light movements of her little feet and hands, enchanting was that lovely face in its animation, but there was something terrible and cruel about her charm.”

“These prin­ciples laid down as in variable rules: that one must pay a card sharper, but need not pay a tailor; that one must never tell a lie to a man, but one may to a woman; that one must never cheat any one, but one may a husband; that one must never pardon an insult, but one may give one and so on. These principles were possibly not reasonable and not good, but they were of unfailing certainty, and so long as he adhered to them, Vronsky felt that his heart was at peace and he could hold his head up.”

“He felt that he could not turn aside from himself the hatred of men, because that hatred did not come from his being bad (in that case he could have tried to be better), but from his being shamefully and repulsively unhappy. He knew that for this, for the very fact that his heart was torn with grief, they would be merciless to him. He felt that men would crush him as dogs strangle a torn dog yelping with pain. He knew that his sole means of security against people was to hide his wounds from them”

“Her great desire, in fact, was to have something more solid, more tangible than love to rely upon.”

“Charles went to kiss her shoulder. -Leave me alone! she said, you're creasing my dress.”

“He had lived (without being aware of it) on those spiritual truths that he had sucked in with his mother's milk, but he had thought, not merely without recognition of these truths, but studiously ignoring them. ”

“I don't think anything," she said, "but I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be....”

“If I had had the power to prevent my own birth I should certainly never have consented to accept existence under such ridiculous conditions. However, I have the power to end my existence, although I do but give back days that are already numbered. It is an insignificant gift, and my revolt is equally insignificant.”