Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes - Page 3

Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.

You ache with it all; and the more mysterious it is, the more you ache.

He was a sceptic, he was young, abstract, and therefore cruel.

Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it ... one must have the courage to dare.

In the first place I spent most of my time at home, reading. I tried to stifle all that was continually seething within me by means of external impressions. And the only external means I had was reading. Reading, of course, was a great help--exciting me, giving me pleasure and pain. But at times it bored me fearfully. One longed for movement in spite of everything, and I plunged all at once into dark, underground, loathsome vice of the pettiest kind. My wretched passions were acute, smarting, from my continual, sickly irritability I had hysterical impulses, with tears and convulsions. I had no resource except reading, that is, there was nothing in my surroundings which I could respect and which attracted me. I was overwhelmed with depression, too; I had an hysterical craving for incongruity and for contrast, and so I took to vice. I have not said all this to justify myself .... But, no! I am lying. I did want to justify myself. I make that little observation for my own benefit, gentlemen. I don't want to lie. I vowed to myself I would not.

...there is no explaining anything by reasoning and so it is useless to reason.

Well, sir, it is precisely my notion that one sees and learns most of all by observing our younger generations.

I was cursing and swearing at you because of that address, I hated you already because of the lies I had told you. Because I only like playing with words, only dreaming, but, do you know, what I really want is that you should all go to hell. That is what I want. I want peace; yes, I'd sell the whole world for a farthing, straight off, so long as I was left in peace. Is the world to go to pot, or am I to go without my tea? I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I always get my tea.

Alas, I had always loved sorrow and grief, but only for myself, for myself; for them I wept in my pity. I stretched out my arms to them in my despair, accusing, cursing, and despising myself. I told them that I had done all this, I alone, that I had brought them corruption, contagion, and lies!

Man does not live by bread alone.

Another circumstance, too, worried me in those days: that there was no one like me and I was unlike anyone else. "I am alone and they are everyone," I thought–and pondered.

Often a man endures for several years, submits and suffers the cruellest punishments, and then suddenly breaks out over some minute trifle, almost nothing at all.

My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?

Oh, those grumblers! They all take principles as motives and dare not follow their desires.

. . . finally, I couldn't imagine how I could live without books, and I stopped dreaming about marrying that Chinese prince. . . .

They say, the sun brings life to the world. The sun will rise and look is it not a corpse? Everything is dead and there are corpses everywhere. Just people and around them silence__that is the world! "Love one another"__who said that? Whose command is that? The pendulum swings unfeelingly, antagonistically. It's two o'clock at night. Her slippers are standing by her bed, as if waiting for her.... No, seriously, when they take her away tomorrow, what shall I do?

Stupidity is brief and guileless, while wit equivocates and hides. Wit is a scoundrel, while stupidity is honest and sincere.

Oh, I know, I know that heart, that wild but grateful heart, gentlemen of the jury! It will bow before your mercy; it thirsts for a great and loving action, it will melt and mount upwards. There are souls which, in their limitation, blame the whole world. But subdue such a soul with mercy, show it love, and it will curse its past, for there are many good impulses in it. Such a heart will expand and see that God is merciful and that men are good and just. He will be horror-stricken; he will be crushed by remorse and the vast obligation laid upon him henceforth. And he will not say then, 'I am quits,' but will say, 'I am guilty in the sight of all men and am more unworthy than all.' With tears of penitence and poignant, tender anguish, he will exclaim: 'Others are better than I, they wanted to save me, not to ruin me!

People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.

But I've still better things about children. I've collected a great, great deal about Russian children, Alyosha. There was a little girl of five who was hated by her father and mother, 'most worthy and respectable people, of good education and breeding.' You see, I must repeat again, it is a peculiar characteristic of many people, this love of torturing children, and children only. To all other types of humanity these torturers behave mildly and benevolently, like cultivated and humane Europeans; but they are very fond of tormenting children, even fond of children themselves in that sense. it's just their defencelessness that tempts the tormentor, just the angelic confidence of the child who has no refuge and no appeal, that sets his vile blood on fire. In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden- the demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain, the demon of diseases that follow on vice, gout, kidney disease, and so on."This poor child of five was subjected to every possible torture by those cultivated parents. They beat her, thrashed her, kicked her for no reason till her body was one bruise. Then, they went to greater refinements of cruelty- shut her up all night in the cold and frost in a privy, and because she didn't ask to be taken up at night (as though a child of five sleeping its angelic, sound sleep could be trained to wake and ask), they smeared her face and filled her mouth with excrement, and it was her mother, her mother did this. And that mother could sleep, hearing the poor child's groans! Can you understand why a little creature, who can't even understand what's done to her, should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her? Do you understand that, friend and brother, you pious and humble novice? Do you understand why this infamy must be and is permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much? Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to dear, kind God'! I say nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have eaten the apple, damn them, and the devil take them all! But these little ones! I am making you suffer, Alyosha, you are not yourself. I'll leave off if you like

I swear to you that to think too much is a disease, a real, actual disease.

Education has nothing whatever to do with moral deterioration; and if one must admit that it develops a resolute spirit among the people, that is far from being a defect.

Try and set yourself the task not to think of a white bear, and the cursed thing comes to mind every minute.

It is always so, when we are unhappy we feel more strongly the unhappiness of others; our feeling is not shattered, but becomes concentrated...

Where is it I've read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once. Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!

O principal é não mentir. Quem mente para si mesmo e dá ouvido à sua própria mentira chega a tal extremo que não consegue ver nenhuma verdade em si ou naqueles que o rodeiam e, por conseguinte, perde completamente o respeito por si e pelos outros. (...) Quem mente a si próprio pode ser o primeiro a ofender-se. Às vezes, é tão agradável uma pessoa se ofender, não é verdade? O indivíduo sabe que ninguém o injuriou, que tudo não passa de simples invenção, que ele próprio mentiu e exagerou apenas para criar um quadro, para fazer de um grão uma montanha - sabe tudo e, no entanto, se ofende. Ofende-se a ponto se sentir prazer na ofensa e, desse modo, atinge o verdadeiro ódio...

...and in fact I've noticed that faith always seems to be less in the daytime

I would give away all this superstellar life, all the ranks and honours, simply to be transformed into the soul of a merchant’s wife weighing eighteen stone and set candles at God’s shrine

In wine is truth, and the truth had all come out, "that is, all the uncleanness of his coarse and envious heart"!

I can't bear the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom.

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.

We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'.

But here I should imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at all—but the certain knowledge that in an hour, then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now—this very instant—your soul must quit your body and that you will no longer be a man—and that this is certain, certain!

Indeed, in that sense we’re all rather often almost like mad people, only with the slight difference that the ‘sick’ are somewhat madder than we are, so that it’s necessary to draw a line here.

Our historical pastime is the direct satisfaction of inflicting pain. There are lines in Nekrassov describing how a peasant lashes a horse on the eyes, 'on its meek eyes,' everyone must have seen it. It's peculiarly Russian. He describes how a feeble little nag has foundered under too heavy a load and cannot move. The peasant beats it, beats it savagely, beats it at last not knowing what he is doing in the intoxication of cruelty, thrashes it mercilessly over and over again. 'However weak you are, you must pull, if you die for it.' The nag strains, and then he begins lashing the poor defenceless creature on its weeping, on its 'meek eyes.' The frantic beast tugs and draws the load, trembling all over, gasping for breath, moving sideways, with a sort of unnatural spasmodic action- it's awful in Nekrassov. But that only a horse, and God has horses to be beaten.

Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God's help I attain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy.

Young man,” he went on, raising his head again, “in your face I seem to read some trouble of mind. When you came in I read it, and that was why I addressed you at once. For in unfolding to you the story of my life, I do not wish to make myself a laughing-stock before these idle listeners, who indeed know all about it already, but I am looking for a man of feeling and education. Know then that my wife was educated in a high-class school for the daughters of noblemen, and on leaving, she danced the shawl dance before the governor and other personages for which she was presented with a gold medal and a certificate of merit. The medal … well, the medal of course was sold—long ago, hm … but the certificate of merit is in her trunk still and not long ago she showed it to our landlady. And although she is most continually on bad terms with the landlady, yet she wanted to tell some one or other of her past honours and of the happy days that are gone. I don’t condemn her for it. I don’t blame her, for the one thing left her is recollection of the past, and all the rest is dust and ashes. Yes, yes, she is a lady of spirit, proud and determined. She scrubs the floors herself and has nothing but black bread to eat, but won’t allow herself to be treated with disrespect. That’s why she would not overlook Mr. Lebeziatnikov’s rudeness to her, and so when he gave her a beating for it, she took to her bed more from the hurt to her feelings than from the blows. She was a widow when I married her, with three children, one smaller than the other. She married her first husband, an infantry officer, for love, and ran away with him from her father’s house. She was exceedingly fond of her husband; but he gave way to cards, got into trouble and with that he died. He used to beat her at the end: and although she paid him back, of which I have authentic documentary evidence, to this day she speaks of him with tears and she throws him up at me; and I am glad, I am glad that, though only in imagination, she should think of herself as having once been happy.… And she was left at his death with three children in a wild and remote district where I happened to be at the time; and she was left in such hopeless poverty that, although I have seen many ups and downs of all sorts, I don’t feel equal to describing it even. Her relations had all thrown her off. And she was proud, too, excessively proud.… And then, honoured sir, and then, I, being at the time a widower, with a daughter of fourteen left me by my first wife, offered her my hand, for I could not bear the sight of such suffering. You can judge the extremity of her calamities, that she, a woman of education and culture and distinguished family, should have consented to be my wife. But she did! Weeping and sobbing and wringing her hands, she married me! For she had nowhere to turn! Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn? No, that you don’t understand yet…

…everyone needs a somewhere, a place he can go. There comes a time, you see, inevitably there comes a time you have to have a somewhere you can go!

Because everyone is guilty for everyone else. For all the 'wee ones,' because there are little children and big children. All people are 'wee ones.' And I'll go for all of them, because there must be someone who will go for all of them.

[T]hat they may believe you, you must say it as obscurely as possible, just like that, simply in hints. You must only give them a peep of the truth, just enough to tantalize them. They'll tell a story better than ours, and of course they'll believe themselves more than they would us...

There is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps the most important of your ideas.

He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animated abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarize it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely.

Sorrow compressed my heart, and I felt I would die, and then . . . Well, then I woke up.

Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.

And, beginning to grind his teeth again, Pyotr Petrovich admitted that he'd been a fool--but only to himself, of course.

For everyone now strives most of all to seperate his person, wishing to experience the fullness of life within himself, and yet what comes of all his efforts is not the fullness of life, but full suicide, for instead of the fullness of self-definition, they fall into complete isolation.

Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled.

My brother asked the birds to forgive him: that sounds senseless, but it is right; for all is like an ocean, all is flowing and blending; a touch in one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth. It may be senseless to beg forgiveness of the birds, but birds would be happier at your side –a little happier, anyway– and children and all animals, if you yourself were nobler than you are now. It’s all like an ocean, I tell you. Then you would pray to the birds too, consumed by an all-embracing love in a sort of transport, and pray that they too will forgive you your sin.

We obtained literature by our own efforts, it is a product of our own life, and that is why we love it so much and hold it so dear, why we pin our hopes on it.

Frankly, if there ever was a time when I was really happy, it wasn't during those first intoxicating moments of my success, but long before that, when I hadn't yet read or shown my manuscript to anyone -- during those long nights of ecstatic hopes and dreams and passionate love of my work, when I had grown attached to my vision, to the characters I had created myself, as though they were my own offspring, as though they really existed -- and I loved, rejoiced and grieved over them, at times even shedding quite genuine tears over my guileless hero.

All we Karamazovs are such insects. And angel as you are, that insect lives in you, too, and will stir up a tempest in your blood. Tempests, because sensual lust is a tempest - worse than a tempest! Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed, for God sets before us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side. I am not an educated nor cultured man, Alyosha, but I've thought a lot about this. It's terrible what mysteries there are! Too many riddles weigh men down on earth. We must solve as we can, and try to keep a dry skin in the water. Beauty! I can't bear the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom. What's still more awful is that a man with the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal of the Madonna, and his heart may be on fire with that ideal, genuinely on fire, just as in his days of youth and innocence. Yes, man is broad, too broad. I'd have him narrower. The devil only knows what to make of it! What to the mind is shameful is beauty and nothing else to the heart. Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in Sodom. Did you know that secret? The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.

Therefore, in my incontrovertible capacity as plaintiff and defendant judge and accused, I condemn this nature, which has so brazenly and unceremoniously inflicted this suffering… since I am unable to destroy Nature, I am destroying myself, solely out of weariness of having to endure a tyranny in which there is no guilty party.

A long while yet will you keep that great mother's grief. But it will turn in the end into quiet joy, and your bitter tears will be only tears of tender sorrow that purifies the heart and delivers it from sin.

In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us.

I don't need you to tell me I'm not well, though I don't really know what's wrong with me; I think I'm five times healthier than you are.

A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments.

But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road- there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt.

It seems to me that the whole of human life can be summed up in the one statement that man only exists for the purpose of proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not an organ.

I will put up with any mockery rather than pretend that I am satisfied when I am hungry.

Instead of giving a firm foundation for setting the conscience of man at rest forever, Thou didst choose all that is exceptional, vague and enigmatic.