Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes
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Times of crisis, of disruption or constructive change, are not only predictable, but desirable. They mean growth. Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
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For I love the empress of my soul. I love and I cannot but love. You yourself see the whole of me. I shall fly to her, fall down before her: you were right to walk past me.. farewell and forget your victim, never trouble yourself more!
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Since man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a rebel.
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I have seen the truth. It is not as though I had invented it in my mind. I have seen it, SEEN IT and the living image of it has filled my soul forever.
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The death of a child is the greatest reason to doubt the existence of God.
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Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely.
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We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast?
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If the people around you are spiteful and callous and will not hear you, fall down before them and beg their forgiveness; for in truth you are to blame for their not wanting to hear you.
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My God, but what do I care about the laws of nature and arithmatic if for some reason these laws and two times two is four are not to my liking?
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After all, bluff and real emotion exist so easily side by side.
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It suddenly seemed to me that I was lonely, that every one was forsaking me and going away from me. Of course, any one is entitled to ask who "every one" was. For though I had been living almost eight years in Petersburg I had hardly an acquaintance. But what did I want with acquaintances? I was acquainted with all Petersburg as it was.
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Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly.
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Now I'm living out my life in a corner, trying to console myself with the stupid, useless excuse that an intelligent man cannot turn himself into anything, that only a fool can make anything he wants out of himself.
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"I love mankind," he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular."
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Let us first fulfill Christ's injunction ourselves and only then venture to expect it of our children. Otherwise we are not fathers, but enemies of our children, and they are not our children, but our enemies, and we have made them our enemies ourselves.
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Generally speaking, our prisoners were capable of loving animals, and if they had been allowed they would have delighted to rear large numbers of domestic animals and birds in the prison. And I wonder what other activity could better have softened and refined their harsh and brutal natures than this. But it was not allowed. Neither the regulations nor the nature of the prison made it possible.
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Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.
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I do not wish you much happiness--it would bore you; I do not wish you trouble either; but, following the people's philosophy, I will simply repeat: 'Live more' and try somehow not to be too bored; this useless wish I am adding on my own.
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What can become of him if he is in such bondage to the habit of satisfying the innumerable desires he has created for himself? He is isolated, and what concern has he with the rest of humanity? They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown less.
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But what are years, what are months!" he would exclaim. "Why count the days, when even one day is enough for man to know all happiness.
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It is amazing what one ray of sunshine can do for a man!
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Of course boredom may lead you to anything. It is boredom sets one sticking golden pins into people, but all that would not matter. What is bad (this is my comment again) is that I dare say people will be thankful for the gold pins then.
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I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness — a real thorough-going illness.
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'You're a gentleman,' they used to say to him. 'You shouldn't have gone murdering people with a hatchet; that's no occupation for a gentleman.'