Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Coming joys, like tropical shores, throw over the immensity before them their inborn softness, an odorous wind, and we are lulled by this intoxication without a thought of the horizon that we do not even know.”

“Brothers, have no fear of men's sin. Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all of God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things.”

“The question is not resolved in you, and there lies your great grief, for it urgently demands resolution...Even if it cannot be resolved in a positive way, it will never be resolved in the negative way either--you yourself know this property of your heart, and therein lies the whole of its torment. But thank the Creator that he has given you a lofty heart, capable of being tormented by such a torment, 'to set your mind on things that are above, for our true homeland is in heaven.' May God grant that your heart's decision overtake you still on earth, and may God bless your path!”

“Listen, Kolya, by the way, you are going to be a very unhappy man in your life...But on the whole you will bless life all the same.”

“دروغ را به سبك خود گفتن، بهتر از حقيقتي است به تقليد ديگري”

“exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be discounted; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the precise measure of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human speech is like a cracked kettle (caldron), upon which we beat out tunes fit to make bears dance when our aim is to move the stars to pity.”

“Yet she resigned herself: reverently she put away in the chest of drawers her beautiful dress and even her satin shoes, whose soles had been yellowed by the slippery wax of the dance floor. Her heart was like them: contact with wealth had laid something over it that would not be wiped away.”

“encontrava-se numa dessas crises em que a alma inteira mostra indistintamente o que encerra como o oceano que, nas tempestades, entreabre-se das algas das praia até a areia dos abismos.”

“sorrow rushed into her soul, moaning softly like the winter wind in abandoned manor houses.”

“Здесь Дьявол с Богом борется, а поле битвы - сердца людей.”

“لأن الإشتراكية ليست نظرة الى مسألة الطبقة العاملة فحسب, او ما يطلق عليه اسم "الدولة الرابعة" انما هي قبل كل شيئ نظرة إلحادية و تجسيد حديث للكفر بالدين. انها قصة برج بابل القديمة التي أراد البشر ان يشيدوه بلا إله كما يحاولون ذلك الآن، لا ليرتفعوا من الارض الى السماوات، بل لينزلوا السماء الى الارض”

“I invented adventures for myself and made up a life, so as at least to live in some way.”

“while I don’t agree or care for what you are saying, I do support your right to say it, for herein lies true freedom’.”

“فما هو هدفي من الكتابة بالضبط ؟ وإذا لم يكن ذلك لمصلحة الجمهور، فلماذا لا أتذكر هذه الحوادث في ذهني؛ بدون أن أسجلها على الورق؟ ذلك حق، إلا أنها ستكون أشد وقعاً إذا كانت مكتوبة، وسيكون في امكاني أن أنتقد نفسي، وأن أحسن أسلوبي . وبالاضافة إلى ذلك فستنعشني الكتابة قليلاً، لأنني اليوم قلق جداً بشأن حادثة من حوادث الماضي حضرت في ذهني بكل وضوح منذ أيام، وظلت مستحوذة عل ي وكأنها نغمة مقلقة لا يمكن الخلاص منها. بيد أنني يجب أن أتخلص منها بطريقة ما، ولدي مئات من هذه الذكريات، ولكن هذه الذكرى بالذات تبرز وحدها وتضايقني كثيراً. ولسبب من الأسباب أعتقد بأنني أستطيع أن أتخلص منها إذا سجلتها على الورق، فلماذا لا أحاول؟.. وبالاضافة إلى ذلك فإنني ضجر، وليس لدي ما أفعله، والكتابة نوع من أنواع العمل يجعل الانسان طيب القلب أميناً. وهذه فرصة لي على أي حال.”

“U svakom slučaju, ako čovjek od civilizacije nije postao krvožedniji, postao je sigurno ružnije, ogavnije krvožedan nego prije. Prije je u krvoproliću gledao pravednost i mirne je savjesti tamanio koga je već trebalo; a sada, ako krvoproliće i smatramo gadošću, ipak se bavimo tom gadošću, pa i više nego prije.”

“As for what concerns me in particular I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in deceiving yourselves. So that perhaps, after all, there is more life in me than in you. Look into it more carefully! Why, we don't even know what living means now, what it is, and what it is called? Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. We are oppressed at being men--men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalised man. We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea.”

“There are people who feel deeply but are somehow beaten down. Their buffoonery is something like a spiteful irony against those to whom they dare not speak the truth directly because of a long-standing, humiliating timidity before them. Believe me, Krasotkin, such buffoonery is sometimes extremely tragic.”

“what good is faith by force? Besides, proofs are no help to faith, especially material proofs. Thomas believed not because he saw the risen Christ but because he wanted to believe even before that.2 Spiritualists, for example … I like them so much … imagine, they think they’re serving faith because devils show their little horns to them from the other world. ‘This,’ they say, ‘is a material proof, so to speak, that the other world exists.’ The other world and material proofs, la-di-da! And, after all, who knows whether proof of the devil is also a proof of God? I want to join an idealist society and form an opposition within it: ‘I’m a realist,’ I’ll say, ‘not a materialist,’ heh, heh!”

“For know, dear ones, that every one of us is undoubtedly responsible for all men- and everything on earth, not merely through the general sinfulness of creation, but each one personally for all mankind and every individual man. This knowledge is the crown of life for the monk and for every man. For monks are not a special sort of men, but only what all men ought to be. Only through that knowledge, our heart grows soft with infinite, universal, inexhaustible love.”

“Those innocent eyes cut my soul like a razor...however, in a depraved man this, too, might be only a sensual attraction.”