Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes
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Yet, I didn't understand that she was intentionally disguising her feelings with sarcasm; that was usually the last resort of people who are timid and chaste of heart, whose souls have been coarsely and impudently invaded; and who, until the last moment, refuse to yield out of pride and are afraid to express their own feelings to you.
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Power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare!
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Of course my jokes are in poor taste, inappropriate, and confused; they reveal my lack of security. But that is because I have no respect for myself.
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If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man ... just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.
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I believe there is no one deeper, lovelier, more sympathetic and more perfect than Jesus.
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Love is such a priceless treasure that you can buy the whole world with it, and redeem not only your own but other people's sins. Go, and do not be afraid.
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... people only count their misfortunes; their good luck they take no account of. But if they were to take everything into account, as they should, they'd find that they had their fair share of it.
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Man has not the right to turn aside and heed not what is happening in the world around him, and this I maintain on moral grounds of the highest order.
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A new philosophy, a new way of life, is not given for nothing. It has to be paid dearly for and only acquired with much patience and great effort.
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If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.
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I want to suffer and be purified by suffering!
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The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.
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All the Utopias will come to pass only when we grow wings and all people are converted into angels.
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I used to imagine adventures for myself, I invented a life, so that I could at least exist somehow.
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How does it come about that what an intelligent man expresses is much stupider than what remains inside him?
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As for me, this is my story: I worked and was tortured. You know what it means to compose? No, thank God, you do not! I believe you have never written to order, by the yard, and have never experienced that hellish torture.
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Coming at twenty to his father's house, which was a very sink of filthy debauchery, he, chaste and pure as he was, simply withdrew in silence when to look on was unbearable, but without the slightest sign of contempt or condemnation. His father, who had once been in a dependent position, and so was sensitive and ready to take offense, met him at first with distrust and sullenness.
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A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.
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If you happen to have a wart on your nose or forehead, you cannot help imagining that no one in the world has anything else to do but stare at your wart, laugh at it, and condemn you for it, even though you have discovered America.
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Without a clear perception of his reasons for living, man will never consent to live, and will rather destroy himself than tarry on earth, though he be surrounded with bread".
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I've made a terrible confession to you, he concluded gloomily. Do appreciate it, gentlemen. And it's not enough, not enough to appreciate it, you must not just appreciate it, it should also be precious to you, and if not, if this, too, goes past your souls, then it means you really do not respect me, gentlemen. I tell you that, and I will die of shame at having confessed to such men as you.
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Let us not forget that the reasons for human actions are usually incalculably more complex and diverse than we tend to explain them later, and are seldom clearly manifest.
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It's in the homes of spiteful old widows that one finds such cleanliness.
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Нет бессмертия души, так нет и добродетели, значит, всё позволено. … Без бога-то и без будущей жизни? Ведь это, стало быть, теперь всё позволено, всё можно делать?