Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“But I tell you what it is; an honest and sensitive man is open; and a business man 'listens and goes on eating' you up.”

“إن ما يخافه البشر أكثر ما يخافون هو أن يتقدموا خطوة إلى أمام.”

“ماذا يفيده وماذا يجديه أن يستمر في الصراع والكفاح؟ أيحيا من أجل أن يوجد؟ ألا انه كان طوال حياته مستعدا لأن يضحي بوجوده ألف مرة في سبيل فكرة، في سبيل أمل، بل وفي سبيل تحقيق نزوة! إن الوجود في حد ذاته لم يكن كافيا له في يوم من الأيام وإنما هو كان يطمع دائما في أكثر من ذلك! ولعل اعنف رغباته كان وحده السبب في انه ظن نفسه انسانا يجوز له مالا يجوز لغيره !”

“What’s the most offensive is not their lying — one can always forgive lying — lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth — what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying. . .”

“لئن لم يكن في هذا العالم شيء أصعب من الصدق والصراحة، فلا شيء في العالم أسهل من التملق. فالصدق إذا اندس فيه عشر معشار من الكذب سرعان ما يخالطه نشاز فتقع فضيحة. أما التملق فإنه إذا كان كذبًا من أوله إلى آخره، يظل سارًا وممتعًا، فالشخص يصغي إليه شاعرًا بلذة إن لم تكن لذة سامية فهي لذة على كل حال. ومهما يكن التملق مفضوحا فإن نصف المديح على الأقل ينطلي على الممدوح. يصدق هذا على جميع طبقات الناس في المجتمع. ان في وسعك أن تغوي بالمديح أطهر فتاة فمابالك بغيرها”

“Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn. And for him, living in a certain society—owing to the need, ordinarily developed at years of discretion, for some degree of mental activity—to have views was just as indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a reason for his preferring liberal to conservative views, which were held also by many of his circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism more rational, but from its being in closer accordance with his manner of life. The liberal party said that in Russia everything is wrong, and certainly Stepan Arkadyevitch had many debts and was decidedly short of money. The liberal party said that marriage is an institution quite out of date, and that it needs reconstruction; and family life certainly afforded Stepan Arkadyevitch little gratification, and forced him into lying and hypocrisy, which was so repulsive to his nature. The liberal party said, or rather allowed it to be understood, that religion is only a curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of the people; and Stepan Arkadyevitch could not get through even a short service without his legs aching from standing up, and could never make out what was the object of all the terrible and high-flown language about another world when life might be so very amusing in this world. And with all this, Stepan Arkadyevitch, who liked a joke, was fond of puzzling a plain man by saying that if he prided himself on his origin, he ought not to stop at Rurik and disown the first founder of his family—the monkey. And so Liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch's, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain. He read the leading article, in which it was maintained that it was quite senseless in our day to raise an outcry that radicalism was threatening to swallow up all conservative elements, and that the government ought to take measures to crush the revolutionary hydra; that, on the contrary, "in our opinion the danger lies not in that fantastic revolutionary hydra, but in the obstinacy of traditionalism clogging progress," etc., etc. He read another article, too, a financial one, which alluded to Bentham and Mill, and dropped some innuendoes reflecting on the ministry. With his characteristic quickwittedness he caught the drift of each innuendo, divined whence it came, at whom and on what ground it was aimed, and that afforded him, as it always did, a certain satisfaction. But today that satisfaction was embittered by Matrona Philimonovna's advice and the unsatisfactory state of the household. He read, too, that Count Beist was rumored to have left for Wiesbaden, and that one need have no more gray hair, and of the sale of a light carriage, and of a young person seeking a situation; but these items of information did not give him, as usual, a quiet, ironical gratification. Having finished the paper, a second cup of coffee and a roll and butter, he got up, shaking the crumbs of the roll off his waistcoat; and, squaring his broad chest, he smiled joyously: not because there was anything particularly agreeable in his mind—the joyous smile was evoked by a good digestion.”

“Where is it.. where is it I have read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only room to stand, and the ocean everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him. If he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once. Only to live, to live and live. Life, whatever it may be, how true it is.”

“I ain’t everybody, and I can’t stand it. It’s awful to be tied up so. And grub comes too easy – I don’t take no interest in vittles, that way. […] Looky-here, Tom, being rich ain’t what it’s cracked out to be. It’s just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing you was dead all the time. […] now you just take my sheer of it along with your’n, and gimme a ten-center sometimes – not many times, becuz I don’t give a dern for a thing ‘thout it’s tollable hard to git. […] No, Tom, I won’t be rich, and I won’t live in them cussed smothery houses. I like the woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and I’ll stick to ‘em, too.”

“Do you think, you who sold it, that this bottom of yours has been sweet to me? Affliction, I sought affliction at the bottom of it, tears and affliction, and I found them, I tasted them.”

“- in the end she felt pity for me, for the lost man. And when a girl's heart is moved to pity, that is, of course, most dangerous for her. She's sure to want to "save" him then, to bring him to reason, to resurrect him, to call him to nobler aims, to regenerate him into a new life and new activity. Well, everyone knows what can be dreamt up in that vein. I saw at once that the bird was flying into my net on its own.”

“Prima di sposarsi, Emma aveva creduto di essere innamorata, ma la felicità che avrebbe dovuto nascere da questo amore non esisteva, ed ella pensava ormai di essersi sbagliata. Cercava ora di capire cosa volessero dire realmente le parole felicità, passione, ebbrezza, che le erano sembrate così belle nei libri.”

“There are bookish dreams here, sir, there is a heart chafed by theories;”

“إننا جميعا علي وجه التقريب نشبه المجانين حقا في كثير من الأحيان,مع فرق واحد ذلك هو  أن المرضي مجانين أكثر منا قليلا,فمن الضروري أن نميز ههنا درجات.أما الإنسان  السوي فمن الواجب أن نقول أنه لا يكاد له وجود. قد نجد فردا سويا أو فردا قريبا من السوي, بين عشرات الألوف و ربما مئات الألوف من الأفراد.”

“There was always an uncertain promise dangling in the future like a golden fruit hanging from some fantastic bough.”

“قال الكاهن لكاترين: الله رحيم . أملي في عون الرب -هو رحيم ولا شك ، لكنه ليس رحيما بنا نحن - هذا اثم يا سيدتي ، هذا اثم فصرخت مشيرة إلى المحتضر "زوجها": وهذا ، أليس إثما؟”

“The most basic, most rudimentary spiritual need of the Russian people is the need for suffering, ever-present and unquenchable, everywhere and in everything.”

“كي يكون المرء قادرا على الكتابه جيدا عليه ان يعاني”

“دعوني، دعوني وحيدا! ذلك ما كنت قد قررته. وقد قررته واعيا كل الوعي مدركا كل الادراك! .. أريد أن أكون وحيدا مهما يحدث لي، سواء أهلكت أم لم أهلك! انسوني نسيانا تاما، ذلكم أفضل ... لا تسألوا عني، لا تستطلعوا أخباري. سوف أجيء من تلقاء نفسي متى وجب أن أجيء ... أو سوف أدعوكم إلي. ولعل كل شيء سيبعث بعثا جديدا حينذاك. أما الان فاعدلوا عن لقائي إذا كنتم تحبونني، وإلا شعرت نحوكم بكره وبغض. إنني أحس بهذا ... وداعا!”

“Era una notte incantevole, una di quelle notti che succedono solo se si è giovani, gentile lettore.”

“Human nature is not taken into account, it is excluded, it's not supposed to exist! They don't recognise that humanity, developing by a historical living process, will become at last a normal society, but they believe that a social system that has come out of some mathematical brain is going to organise all humanity at once and make it just and sinless in an instant, quicker than any living process! That's why they instinctively dislike history, 'nothing but ugliness and stupidity in it,' and they explain it all as stupidity! That's why they so dislike the living process of life; they don't want a living soul! The living soul demands life, the soul won't obey the rules of mechanics, the soul is an object of suspicion, the soul is retrograde! But what they want though it smells of death and can be made of india-rubber, at least is not alive, has no will, is servile and won't revolt! And it comes in the end to their reducing everything to the building of walls and the planning of rooms and passages in a phalanstery! The phalanstery is ready, indeed, but your human nature is not ready for the phalanstery--it wants life, it hasn't completed its vital process, it's too soon for the graveyard! You can't skip over nature by logic.”