Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes
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Two and two make four. Nature doesn't ask your advice. She isn't interested in your preferences or whether or not you approve of her laws. You must accept nature as she is with all the consequences that that implies.
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Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
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I'm drunk but truthful.
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In summer, intolerable closeness; in winter, unendurable cold. All the floors were rotten. Filth on the floors an inch thick; one could slip and fall.
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For what is man without desires, without free will, and without the power of choice but a stop in an organ pipe?
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Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ.
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We have all lost touch with life, we all limp, each to a greater or lesser degree.
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I wanted to discuss the suffering of humanity in general, but perhaps we'd better confine ourselves to the sufferings of children.
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Here my tears are falling, Nastenka. Let them flow, let them flow - they don't hurt anybody. They will dry Nastenka.
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What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
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Be the sun and all will see you.
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There is immeasurably more left inside than what comes out in words. Your thought, even a bad one, while it is with you, is always more profound, but in words it is more ridiculous and dishonorable.
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The more you succeed in loving, the more you'll be convinced at the existence of God and the immortality of your soul.
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A beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel.
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They have this social justification for every nasty thing they do!
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Above all, avoid lies, all lies, especially the lie to yourself. Keep watch on your own lie and examine it every hour, every minute. And avoid contempt, both of others and of yourself: what seems bad to you in yourself is purified by the very fact that you have noticed it in yourself. And avoid fear, though fear is simply the consequence of every lie. Never be frightened at your own faintheartedness in attaining love, and meanwhile do not even be very frightened by your own bad acts.
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Was it all put into words, or did both understand that they had the same thing at heart and in their minds, so that there was no need to speak of it aloud, and better not to speak of it?
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It’s not God that I do not accept, you understand, it is this world of God’s, created by God, that I do not accept and cannot agree to accept.
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One can't understand everything at once, we can't begin with perfection all at once! In order to reach perfection one must begin by being ignorant of a great deal. And if we understand things too quickly, perhaps we shan't understand them thoroughly.
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For broad understanding and deep feeling, you need pain and suffering.
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How good life is when one does something good and just!
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Besides, nowadays, almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.
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... active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with the love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one's life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and eveyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and persistence, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science.
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But how could you live and have no story to tell?