Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes
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Only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.
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Hang your merit. I don't seek anyone's approbation.
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If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.
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Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it ... one must have the courage to dare.
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When reason fails, the devil helps!
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I suddenly dreamt that I picked up the revolver and aimed it straight at my heart - my heart, and not my head; and I had determined beforehand to fire at my head, at my right temple. After aiming at my chest I waited a second or two, and suddenly my candle, my table, and the wall in front of me began moving and heaving. I made haste to pull the trigger.
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My soul bleeds and the blood steadily, silently, disturbingly slowly, swallows me whole.
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They won't let me ... I can't be ... good!
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Pass by us, and forgive us our happiness.
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It's a burden to us even to be human beings-men with our own real body and blood; we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalized man.
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I am a wicked man... But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness? The whole thing, precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious every moment, even in moments of the greatest bile, that I was not only not a wicked man but was not even an embittered man, that I was simply frightening sparrows in vain, and pleasing myself with it.
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There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.
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Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.
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Why count the days, when even one days is enough for a man to know all happiness?
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At first it was simply liking, Nastenka, but now, now ! I am just in the same position as you were when you went to him with your bundle. In a worse position than you, Nastenka,because he cared for no one else as you do.
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Shower on him every blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, give him economic prosperity such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes, and busy himself with the continuation of the species, and even then, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick.
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Learning to love is hard and we pay dearly for it. It takes hard work and a long apprenticeship, for it is not just for a moment that we must learn to love, but forever.
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Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human.
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I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.
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. . . finally, I couldn't imagine how I could live without books, and I stopped dreaming about marrying that Chinese prince. . . .
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If God does not exist, then everything is permissible.
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For socialism is not merely the labour question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth.
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He did not know that the new life would not be given him for nothing, that he would have to pay dearly for it, that it would cost him great striving, great suffering. But that is the beginning of a new story -- the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.
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If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his punishment-as well as the prison.