Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“For the whole world to vanish into thin air, or for me not to drink my tea? I say, let the world perish if I can always drink my tea.”

“İnsan,gelip geçici heveseleri olan,tutarsız bir varlıktır ve tıpkı satranç oyuncuları gibi hedefe ulaşmayı değilde hedefe giden yolları daha çok sever. Emin olamayız elbette,ama insanın ulaşmak için çabaladığı şey, hedefe giden bu yol olabilir;o da hayatın ta kendisidir zaten. Aslına bakılırsa hedef,iki kere iki dörttür yani bir formüldür; ama bu formül hayatın değil,ölümün başlangıcıdır. İnsan,daima iki kere ikinin dört etmesinden az da olsa bir korku duymuştur;tıpkı benim duyduğum gibi. İnsanın uğruna denizler aştığı,hayatını tükettiği hedefi iki kere iki dörttür; ama öte yandan insanın korkusu bu hedefe ulaşmaktır. Çünkü ulaştığı an hedefsiz kalacağının bilincindedir... İnsan,hedefe ilerlemeyi sever ulaşmayı değil; şüphesiz çok gülünç bir durumdur bu. İşin en hoş tarafı insanın daha doğduğunda gülünç olmasındadır. İki kere iki dört formülü, yine de dayanılmaz şey doğrusu. Bana kalırsa iki kere iki dört, büyük bir küstahlıktır ve etrafa tükürükler saçan,elleri belinde,yol kesen bir külhan beyinin ta kendisidir. İki kere ikinin mükemmelliğine inanıyorum; fakat ondan daha üstün olduğuna inandığım şey, iki kere ikinin beş etmesidir.' Yeraltından Notlar - Dostoyevski”

“ويمثل اليأس أقصى درجات الاستمتاع، خاصة حين يدرك الإنسان تماماً أنه في موقف ميئوس منه”

“إن الانسان يميل إلى إنشاء الطرق والخلق والابتكار، وهذه حقيقة لا جدال فيها، ولكن لماذا يملك مثل هذا الميل والاندفاع الشديد إلى الدمار والفوضى أيضاً؟ هلا أجبتموني عن ذلك؟ بيد أنني أريد أن أقول بعض الأمور عن هذا بنفسي. أفلا يكون ذلك لأن الانسان يحب الفوضى والدمار؟ ( ولا جدال في أنه يحبهما أحياناً) لأنه يخشى خشية فطرية من حصوله على هدفه ومن اكماله للشيء الذي يقوم ببنائه؟ ومن يعلم؟ فربما يحب الانسان ذلك البناء إذا كان بعيداً عنه ولا يحبه إذا كان قريب التحقيق”

“And with love one can live even without happiness.”

“Another circumstance, too, worried me in those days: that there was no one like me and I was unlike anyone else. "I am alone and they are everyone," I thought–and pondered.”

“You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, there's no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man's nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. And although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply extracting square roots. Here I, for instance, quite naturally want to live, in order to satisfy all my capacities for life, and not simply my capacity for reasoning, that is, not simply one twentieth of my capacity for life. What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning (some things, perhaps, it will never learn; this is a poor comfort, but why not say so frankly?) and human nature acts as a whole, with everything that is in it, consciously or unconsciously, and, even if it goes wrong, it lives.”

“what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less. We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have come almost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and we are all privately agreed that it is better in books. And why do we fuss and fume sometimes? Why are we perverse and ask for something else? We don't know what ourselves. It would be the worse for us if our petulant prayers were answered. Come, try, give any one of us, for instance, a little more independence, untie our hands, widen the spheres of our activity, relax the control and we ... yes I assure you... should be begging to be under control again at once.”

“...the laws of nature have continually all my life offended me more than anything.”

“Jam njeri i semure... Jam edhe tip keqdashesi. Nuk bej pjese, nderkohe, ne simpatiket. Me duket se vuaj nga melçia, ndonese vete une gje prej gjeje nuk kuptoj nga semundjet, as qe e di me saktesi ç'me dhemb. Nuk kurohem e as jam kuruar ndonjehere, pavaresisht nga respekti qe kam per mjekesine (se i shkolluar une jam, por edhe bestyd jam). Me ka hipur ne kole, nuk dua te kurohem nga inati. Ju kete kushedi as edhe e kuptoni, kurse une e kuptoj, ndonese s'jam ne gjendje t'ua shpjegoj se kujt i bej dem me kete inat timin. E di fort mire, qe as mjekeve e askujt tjeter nuk i behet vone qe jam tip inatçori, e as vete per veten nuk e çaj koken, ndonese fort mire e di qe inati eshte dem i kokes. Ngado qe ta sjellesh e kam mbushur mendjen, e kam bere top: nuk dua qe nuk dua te kurohem. Me dhemb kjo e shkrete melçi, le te dhembe, nuk paska plasur!”

“If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.”

“There are some people about whom it is difficult to say anything which would describe them immediately and fully in their most typical and characteristic aspects; these are the people who are usually called "ordinary" and accounted as "the majority," and who actually do make up the great majority of society. In their novels and stories writers most often try to choose and present vividly and artistically social types which are extremely seldom encountered in real life, and which are nevertheless more real than real life itself. Podkolyosin, viewed as a type, in perhaps exaggerated, but he is hardly unknown. How many clever people having learned from Gogol about Podkolyosin at once discover that great numbers of their friends bear a terrific resemblance to Podkolyosin. They knew before Gogol that their friends were like Podkolyosin, except they did not know yet that that was their name... Nevertheless the question remains before us: what is the novelist to do with the absolutely "ordinary" people, and how can he present them to readers so that they are at all interesting? To leave them out of a story completely is not possible, because ordinary people are at every moment, by and large, the necessary links in the chain of human affairs; leaving them out, therefore, means to destroy credibility. To fill a novel entirely with types or, simply for the sake of interest, strange and unheard-of people, would be improbable and most likely not even interesting. In our opinion the writer must try to find interesting and informative touches even among commonplace people. When, for example, the very nature of certain ordinary persons consists precisely of their perpetual and unvarying ordinariness, or, better still, when in spite of their most strenuous efforts to life themselves out of the rut of ordinariness and routine, then such persons acquire a certain character of their own-the typical character of mediocrity which refuses to remain what it is and desires at all costs to become original and independent, without having the slightest capacity for independence.”

“Se une jo vetem nuk isha nopran e nurzi, por as i lig e as keqdashes nuk isha, ama edhe ndonje hiç nuk ehste se isha. Ja ku po jua them se nuk kam qene as i lig e as i poshter, po as i ndershem, nuk kam qene hero, por edhe shterpi nuk kam qene. Ne keto çaste dergjem ne qoshen time dhe vetem ndersej veten, vetem shtirem sikur kam qene njeri i keq, se, sipas meje, nje njeri qe e ka plot koken, s'ka si ben marrezi si ato te miat, vetem budalli sillet asisoj.”

“البؤس رذيلة ، يستطيع المرء في الفقر أن يظل محاظفاً على نبل عواطفه الفطرية، أما في البؤس فلا يستطيع ذلك يوماً ، وما من أحد يستطيعه قط ، إذا كنت في البؤس فإنك لا تطرد من مجتمع البشر ضرباً بالعصا ، بل تطرد منه ضرباً بالمكنسة بغية إذلالك مزيداً من الإذلال .”

“...Imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny creature, that same child who was beating her chest with her little fist, and raise your edifice on the foundation of her unrequited tears--would you agree to be the architect on such conditions?”

“‎" You think I am attacking them for talking nonsense? Not a bit! I like them to talk nonsense. That's man's one privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth." --Crime and punishment, F. Dostoevsky”

“One of the characters in our story, Gavril Ardalionovitch Ivolgin, belonged to the other category; he belonged to the category of "much cleverer" people; though head to toe he was infected with the desire to be original. But this class of person, as we have observed above, is far less happy than the first. The difficulty is that the intelligent "ordinary" man, even if he does imagine himself at times (and perhaps all his life) a person of genius and originality, nevertheless retains within his heart a little worm of doubt, which sometimes leads the intelligent man in the end to absolute despair. If he does yield in this belief, he is still completely poisoned with inward-driven vanity.”

“Entre as recordações de cada pessoa, há coisas que ela não conta para qualquer um, somente para os amigos. Há também aquelas que ela não conta nem para os amigos, somente para sim mesma, e isso secretamente. Mas, finalmente, há também aquelas que o indivíduo tem medo de revelar até para si mesmo, e um homem respeitável tem tais coisas acumuladas em grande quantidade. E pode ser assim mesmo: quanto mais respeitável ele é, mais coisas desse tipo ele tem acumuladas. Eu, pelo menos, só recentemente tomei coragem para recordar algumas das minhas aventuras passadas, as quais até agora tinha evitado com uma certa inquietação. E agora, quando não só recordei, como até me decidi a escrevê-las, agora exatamente quero tirar a prova: é possível alguém ser inteiramente sincero consigo mesmo e não temer toda a verdade? A propósito: Heine afirma que é quase impossível existirem autobiografias sinceras, porque na certa o ser humano mentirá, falando de si mesmo. Na opinião dele, por exemplo, Rousseau sem dúvida mentiu sobre si mesmo em suas 'Confissões' e fez isso até deliberadamente, por vaidade. Estou convencido de que Heine está certo; entendo perfeitamente como, às vezes, alguém pode confessar uma série de crimes por pura vaidade e percebo até muito bem de que tipo pode ser essa vaidade.”

“And it has always been a mystery, and I've marveled a thousand times at this ability of man (and, it seems, of the Russian man above all) to cherish the highest ideal in his soul alongside the greatest baseness, and all that in perfect sincerity. --The Adolescent (or, The Raw Youth)”

“إنني أصبح عدوا للبشر متى أقتربت منهم”