Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Anyone who attacks individual charity, attacks human nature and casts contempt on personal dignity.”

“I'm now asking an idle question of my own: which is better--cheap happiness, or lofty suffering? Well, which is better?”

“... in St. Petersburg, the most abstract and intentional city on the entire globe. (Cities and be intentional or unintentional.”

“I am forty years old now, and you know forty years is a whole lifetime; you know it is extreme old age. To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who does live beyond forty? Answer that, sincerely and honestly. I will tell you who do: fools and worthless fellows. I tell all old men that to their face, all these venerable old men, all these silver-haired and reverend seniors! I tell the whole world that to its face! I have a right to say so, for I shall go on living to sixty myself. To seventy! To eighty!”

“It ended by my almost believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was perhaps my normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I endured in that struggle! I did not believe it was the same with other people, and all my life I hid this fact about myself as a secret. I was ashamed (even now, perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at last—into positive real enjoyment! Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment! I insist upon that. I have spoken of this because I keep wanting to know for a fact whether other people feel such enjoyment? I will explain; the enjoyment was just from the too intense consciousness of one’s own degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one had reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you never could become a different man; that even if time and faith were still left you to change into something different you would most likely not wish to change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into. And the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in accord with the normal fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness, and with the inertia that was the direct result of those laws, and that consequently one was not only unable to change but could do absolutely nothing. Thus it would follow, as the result of acute consciousness, that one is not to blame in being a scoundrel; as though that were any consolation to the scoundrel once he has come to realise that he actually is a scoundrel.”

“the greater the power, the more terrible its responsibility.”

“It’s that a man falls in love with some beautiful thing, with a woman’s body, or even with just one part of a woman’s body (a sensualist will understand that), and is ready to give his own children for it, to sell his father and mother, Russia and his native land, and though he’s honest, he’ll go and steal; though he’s meek, he’ll kill; though he’s faithful, he’ll betray.”

“Know, then, that now, precisely now, these people are more certain than ever before that they are completely free, and at the same time they themselves have brought us their freedom and obediently laid it at our feet. It is our doing, but is it what you wanted? This sort of freedom?' Again I don't understand', Alyosha interrupted, 'Is he being ironic? Is he laughing?' Not in the least. He precisely lays it to his and his colleagues' credit that they have finally overcome freedom, and have done so in order to make people happy.”

“I am leaving now; but know, Katerina Ivanovna, that you indeed love only him. And the more he insults you, the more you love him. That is your strain. You precisely love him as he is, you love him insulting you. If he reformed, you would drop him at once and stop loving him altogether. But you need him in order to continually contemplate your high deed of faithfulness, and to reproach him for his unfaithfulness. And it all comes from your pride. Oh, there is much humility and humiliation in it, but all of it comes from pride.”

“Is it not I myself who am to blame, instead of them?”

“رُب معرفة صادقة تُجنب كثيراً من المتاعب.”

“أن يعيش المرء بغير إله فذلك عذاب. يلعن البشر ما قد ينير لهم الطريق، حتى دون أن يفطنوا إلى ما يفعلون. أين العقل والحكمة في هذا؟ إن الإنسان لا يستطيع أن يعيش بغير سجود. بغير سجود لا يمكن أن يحتمل الإنسان نفسه. ما من أحد قادر على هذا. فإذا جحد الله سجد لمعبود من خشب أو من ذهب، أو سجد لمعبود صنعه له الخيال إنهم جميعا وثنيون لا ملحدون ولكن كيف لا يكون هناك ملحدون! إن بعض الناس ملحدون حقا، وهؤلاء أبعث على الخوف والرهبة من الآخرين، لأن اسم الله ماثل في أفواههم دائما”

“حقا إنني لا أدري لماذا الحياة قصيرة هذا القصر كله. لا شك أن الغاية من قصرها هي ألا تكون مملة. ذلك أن الحياة هي أيضا عمل فني من أعمال الخالق الأعظم صاغها صيغة نهائية كاملة كقصيدة من قصائد بوشكين. إن الإيجاز أول شروط الفن. ولكن الذين لا يشعرون بالملل يجب أن يُتاح لهم أن يعيشوا مدة أطول”

“يتحدث الناس أحياناً عن جرائم بهيمية، لكن ذلك ظلم وإهانة للحيوانات، فالحيوان لا يمكن أن يقسو مثل الإنسان، فالنمر يبكي ويقضم وليس أكثر من ذلك، فهو لا يفكر بتسمير الناس من آذانهم حتى ولو كان قادرًا على ذلك.”

“What can be more precious than life? Nothing!”

“And here am I ... what did I hope - what did I expect? What rich promise did the future seem to hold out to me, when with scarcely a sigh - only a bleak sense of utter desolation - I took my leave from the brief phantom, risen for a fleeting instant, of my first love? What has come of it all - of all that I had hoped for? And now when the shades of evening are beginning to close in upon my life, what have I left that is fresher, dearer to me, than the memories of that brief storm that came and went so swiftly one morning in spring?”

“I think that if the devil does not exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.”

“It's always worthwhile speaking to a clever man.”

“I know that my youth will triumph over everything - every disillusionment, every disgust with life. I’ve asked myself many times whether there is in in the world any despair that would overcome this frantic and perhaps unseemly thirst for life in me, and I've come to the conclusion that there isn't...”

“You pass by a little child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You don’t know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love.”