Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Every day and every hour, every minute, walk round yourself and watch yourself, and see that your image is a seemly one. 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 defenceless 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. Brothers, love is a teacher; but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire, it is dearly bought, it is won slowly by long labour. For we must love not only occasionally, for a moment, but for ever. Everyone can love occasionally, even the wicked can.”
“ان ما من شئ في هذا العالم يمكن ان يجبر البشر على ان يحبوا أقرانهم, و انه ما من قانون طبيعي يفرض على الانسان ان يحب الانسانية, فاذا كان قد وجد و ما يزال يوجد على هذة الارض شئ من الحب فليس مرد ذلك الى قانون طبيعي بل الى سبب واحد هو اعتقاد البشر انهم خالدون. ان هذا الاعتقاد هو في الاساس الوحيد لكل قانون اخلاقي طبيعي, فاذا فقدت الانسانية هذا الاعتقاد بالخلود فسرعان ما ستغيض كل ينابيع الحب بل و سرعان ما سيفقد البشر كل قدرة على مواصلة حياتهم في هذا العالم. اكثر من ذلك انه لن يبقى هنالك شئ يعد منافيا للاخلاق و سيكون كل شئ مباحا, حتى اكل لحوم البشر.”
“My God, but what do I care about the laws of nature and arithmetic if for some reason these laws and two times two is four are not to my liking? To be sure, I won't break through such a wall with my forehead if I really have not got strength to do it, but neither will I be reconciled with it simply because I have a stone wall here and have not got strength enough.”
“А в самом деле: вот я теперь уж от себя задаю один праздный вопрос: что лучше — дешёвое ли счастие или возвышенные страдания? Ну-ка, что лучше?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Записки из подполья
“Man is broad, too broad, indeed. I'd have him narrower.”
“أن الإنسان الطبيعي الحقيقي ينظر إلى انتقامه على أنه عدل ونقاء وبساطة، مدفوعاً إلى ذلك بحمقه الأصيل، بينما لا نجد الفأر المدرك لنفسه إدراكاً حاداً يفعل ذلك، لأنه لا يؤمن بوجود ذرة من العدالة في ذلك.”
topics: الانتقام
“There are... things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind”
“ولكني أكرر للمرة المائة أن هنالك حالة واحدة، واحدة فقط، يرغب فيها الانسان رغبة مدركة عامدة فيما يضره، وفيما هو الحماقة بعينها – لأنه، ببساطة، يريد أن يمتلك الحق في أن يرغب لنفسه حتى حين يكون من الحماقة جداً أن يرغب فيما هو معقول في حين أن ذلك غير مفروض عليه.”
“But yet I am firmly persuaded that a great deal of consciousness, every sort of consciousness, in fact, is a disease.”
“I could get used to anything-that is, not really get used, but somehow voluntarily consent to endure it”
“A wise man can't seriously make himself anything, only a fool makes himself anything.”
topics: wisdom
“Man loves to construct and lay down roads, no question about it. But why is he so passionately fond of destruction and chaos? [...] Isn't man so passionately fond of destruction and chaos (and there's no disputing that he's sometimes very fond of them, that really is the case) that he himself instinctively fears achieving his goal and completing the building in the course of erection? How do you know - perhaps he only likes the building from a distance and not at all at close quarters; perhaps he only likes building it and not living in it [...]”
“أنتم تعرفون أيها السادة أن العقل شيء ممتاز، وليس في ذلك من شك، ولكن العقل ليس أكثر من عقل، وهو لا يشبع إلا الناحية العقلية من طبيعة الانسان، في حين أن الارادة هي كشف عن الحياة كلها، أي الحياة الانسانية كلها، بما فيها العقل وجميع الدوافع. وبالرغم من أن حياتنا، في هذا الكشف عنها، غالباً ما تكون تافهة، إلا أنها ما تزال حياة، وهي ليست في بساطة استخراج الجذور التربيعية، فأنا مثلا أريد أن أعيش ، ليكون في امكاني إشباع كل امكانياتي الحياتية، لا امكانيتي العقلية وحسب”
topics: الإرادة
“There is only one salvation for you: take yourself up, and make yourself responsible for all the sins of men. For indeed it is so, my friend, and the moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once that it is really so, that it is you who are guilty on behalf of all and for all. Whereas by shifting your own laziness and powerlessness onto others, you will end by sharing in Satan's pride and murmuring against God. The Brothers Karamazov Book VI - The Russian Monk, Chapter 3 - Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zosima.”
topics: community , eastern-orthodox , god , holiness , orthodox , piety , religion , russia , the-brothers-karamazov
“So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and painfully as to find someone to worship. But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time.”
“The memories of home and of her children rose up in her imagination with a peculiar charm quite new to her, with a sort of new brilliance. That world of her own seemed quite new to her now so sweet and precious that she would not on any account spend an extra day outside it, and she made up her mind that she would certainly go back next day.”
topics: motherhood
“Although Pulcheria Alexandrovna was forty-three, her face still retained traces of her former beauty; she looked much younger than her age, indeed, which is almost always the case with women who retain serenity of spirit, sensitiveness and pure sincere warmth of heart to old age. We may add in parenthesis that to preserve all this is the only means of retaining beauty to old age.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Crime and Punishment
“Los verdaderos grandes hombres deben de experimentar, a mi entender, una gran tristeza en este mundo”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky ,
from Crimen y castigo
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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.