Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Well, quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb; it passed away, it is gone, I should say it has sunk; for something always remains at the bottom as one would say—a weight here, at one's heart.”

“But that happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire. She now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated.”

“I will still get angry at Ivan the coachman, I will still argue, I will express my thoughts ineptly, there will be a wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I will still blame her for my own terror and then repent of it, I will still not understand with my reason why I pray, and will go on praying - but my life now, my whole life, regardless of whatever may happen to me, each minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it were before, but possesses the undoubted meaning of that goodness I have the power to put into it!”

“I quite understand you. You mean that an innocent lie for the sake of a good joke is harmless, and does not offend the human heart. Some people lie, if you like to put it so, out of pure friendship, in order to amuse their fellows; but when a man makes use of extravagance in order to show his disrespect and to make clear how the intimacy bores him, it is time for a man of honour to break off the said intimacy., and to teach the offender his place.”

“Children can be told anything—anything. I've always been struck by seeing how little grown-up people understand children, how little parents even understand their own children. Nothing should be concealed from children on the pretext that they are little and that it is too early for them to understand. What a miserable and unfortunate idea! And how readily the children detect that their fathers consider them too little to understand anything, though they understand everything. Grown-up people do not know that a child can give exceedingly good advice even in the most difficult case.”

“Nonetheless, a question remains before us all the same: what is a novelist to do with ordinary, completely "usual" people, and how can he present them to the reader so as to make them at least somewhat interesting? To bypass them altogether in a story is quite impossible, because ordinary people are constantly and for the most part the necessary links in the chain of everyday events; in bypassing them we would thus violate plausibility. To fill novels with nothing but types or even simply, for the sake of interest, with strange and nonexistent people, would be implausible--and perhaps uninteresting as well.”

“О, что такое горе? Знаете, я не понимаю, как можно проходить мимо дерева и не быть счастливым, что видишь его? Говорить с человеком и не быть счастливым, что любишь его! О, я только не умею высказать… а сколько вещей на каждом шагу таких прекрасных, которые даже самый потерявшийся человек находит прекрасными? Посмотрите на ребенка посмотрите на Божию зарю, посмотрите на травку, как она растет, посмотрите в глаза, которые на вас смотрят и вас любят…”

“كان يعذبه أن يتصور أنه غريب عن هذا كله. ما هذه الوليمة، ما هذه الحفلة التي لا نهاية لها، والتي كان يحس أنه منجذب إليها منذ الأزل، منذ طفولته، دون أن يستطيع المشاركة فيها قط. الشمس تطلع مشرقة في كل صباح. وفي كل صباح يرتسم قوس قزح فوق الشلال. حتى إذا غابت الشمس، التهبت بنار كالأرجوان، في كل مساء، عند الأفق، الذروة المغطاة بالثلج من أعلى جبل حول هذه الأراضي. إن كل “ذبابة صغيرة تدندن حوله في شعاع محرق من شمس، فتشارك في جوقة الطبيعة هذه: إنها تعرف مكانها، وتحبه، وهي سعيدة به”. كل عشبة تنمو وتسعد! لكل كائن طريقه الذي يعرفه. يصل ويرحل مغنيًا! أما هو، فهو الوحيد الذي لا يعرف شيئًا، ولا يفهم شيئًا، لا البشر، ولا أصوات الطبيعة، لأنه غريب أجنبي في كل مكان، ولأنه في مكان دخيل منبوذ. صحيح أنه كان في ذلك الحين لا يستطيع أن يعبر عن شعوره بهذه الألفاظ، ولا أن يصوغ سؤاله بهذه العبارات. كان ألمه أصمّ أبكم”

“The repugnance to what must ensue almost immediately, and the uncertainty, were dreadful, he said; but worst of all was the idea, 'What should I do if I were not to die now? What if I were to return to life again? What an eternity of days, and all mine! How I should grudge and count up every minute of it, so as to waste not a single instant!' He said that this thought weighed so upon him and became such a terrible burden upon his brain that he could not bear it, and wished they would shoot him quickly and have done with it." The prince paused and all waited, expecting him to go on again and finish the story. "Is that all?" asked Aglaya. "All? Yes," said the prince, emerging from a momentary reverie. "And why did you tell us this?" "Oh, I happened to recall it, that's all! It fitted into the conversation—" "You probably wish to deduce, prince," said Alexandra, "that moments of time cannot be reckoned by money value, and that sometimes five minutes are worth priceless treasures. All this is very praiseworthy; but may I ask about this friend of yours, who told you the terrible experience of his life? He was reprieved, you say; in other words, they did restore to him that 'eternity of days.' What did he do with these riches of time? Did he keep careful account of his minutes?" "Oh no, he didn't! I asked him myself. He said that he had not lived a bit as he had intended, and had wasted many, and many a minute." "Very well, then there's an experiment, and the thing is proved; one cannot live and count each moment; say what you like, but one cannot." "That is true," said the prince, "I have thought so myself. And yet, why shouldn't one do it?" "You think, then, that you could live more wisely than other people?" said Aglaya. "I have had that idea." "And you have it still?" "Yes — I have it still," the prince replied.”

“Though I have said that I envy the normal man to the point of exasperation, yet I would not care to be in his place as he is now (though I will not stop envying him. No, no; anyway the underground life is more advantageous!) There, at any rate, one can-- bah! But after all, even now I am lying! I am lying because I know myself as surely as two times two makes four, that it is not at all underground that is better, but something different, quite different, for which I long but which I cannot find! Damn underground!”

“Now is the time to throw a bottle at their heads," I thought to myself. I picked up the bottle... and filled my glass...”

“A developed and decent man cannot be vain without a boundless exactingness towards himself and without despising himself at moments to the point of hatred.”

“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?”

“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.”

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

“كان إيليوشا الصغير يحاول أن يخفي الضيق الذي يحسه ، ولكنه كان يدرك في قرارة قلبه المحطم المسحوق أن أباه قد أذله المجتمع، وأن ذكرى ذلك اليوم الرهيب جدا في الكباريه لا تفارقه لحظة . وكانت نينا الكسيحة ، أخت إيليوشا ، المهيضة الوديعة تكره ذلك أيضا ، حتى الأم البلهاء لم تجد في ذلك لذة كبيرة.”

“Maybe not, maybe not. Cheer up, Becky, and let's go on trying.”

“إن شعاع الرجل يدل علي شمسه, وإن هدوءه في القول والتفكير لأبلغ دليل علي رجاحته وإتزانه”