Quotes by "Fyodor Dostoyevsky"

إن في مقدور الإنسان أن يخبر الطفل بكل شيء. كل شيء. وكثيراً ما أذهلتني حقيقة أن الآباء لا يعرفون عن أبنائهم إلا القليل. ليس عليهم أن يخفوا عنهم الكثير لأن الأطفال حتى الصغار منهم يدركون تماماً أن الآباء يخفون عنهم أشياء كثيرة لأنهم يرونهم أصغر من أن يفهموها! إن في إمكان الأطفال أن يقدموا النصيحة في أشد الأمور أهمية. فكيف يمكن للمرء أن يخدع هذه الطيور الصغيرة العزيزة عندما يتطلعون إليه في ثقة ولطف؟ إنني أسميهم طيوراً لأنه لا يوجد في الدنيا أجمل من الطيور

Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely.

It is man's unique privilege, among all other organisms. By pursuing falsehood you will arrive at the truth!

originality and a feeling of one's own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.

Whatever distinguishes one lump of flesh from another when we're alive, we're all the same once we're dead. Just used-up shells.

Oh, how unbearable is a happy person sometimes!

Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly.

Do you think it is a vain hope that one day man will find joy in noble deeds of light and mercy, rather than in the coarse pleasures he indulges in today -- gluttony, fornication, ostentation, boasting, and envious vying with his neighbor? I am certain this is not a vain hope and that the day will come soon.

What if I were not to die! What if life were given back to me-what infinity! And it would all be mine! Then I'd turn each minute into a whole age, I'd lose nothing, I'd reckon up every minute separately, I'd let nothing be wasted! He said that in the end this thought turned into such anger in him that he wished they would hurry up and shoot him

It is easier for a Russian to become an Atheist, than for any other nationality in the world. And not only does a Russian 'become an Atheist,' but he actually BELIEVES IN Atheism, just as though he had found a new faith, not perceiving that he has pinned his faith to a negation. Such is our anguish of thirst!

It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.

For I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind. And it is just this faith of mine that they laugh at.

I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who...prayed..with...unexpiated tears to 'dear,kind God!

I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: 'Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.' When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, 'Thou art just, O Lord!' then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can't accept that harmony.

And if it is a mystery, then we, too, had the right to preach mystery and to teach them that it is not the free choice of the heart that matters, and not love, but the mystery, which they must blindly obey, even setting aside their own conscience. And so we did. We corrected your deed and based it on miracle, mystery, and authority. And mankind rejoiced that they were once more led like sheep, and that at last such a terrible gift, which had brought them so much suffering, had been taken from their hearts.

For the secret of human existence lies not only in living, but in knowing what to live for. Without a firm conviction of the purpose of living, man will not consent to live and will destroy himself rather than remain on earth, though he be surrounded by bread.

Oh, we shall convince them that only in surrendering their freedom to us and submitting to us can they be free. Well, shall we be right or shall we be lying? They will see for themselves that we are right, for they will remember to what horrors of slavery and confusion Your freedom led them. Freedom, science, and independence of spirit will lead them into such a labyrinth and confront them with such miracles and such insoluble mysteries that some of them, intractable and savage, will destroy themselves, while others, intractable but less strong, will destroy one another; and those who remain, feeble and unhappy, will crawl up to our feet and will cry out to us, ‘Yes, you were right, you alone held his secret, and we are returning to you: save us from ourselves.

how anxiously I yearned for those I had forsaken.

I sometimes have moments of such despair, such despair … Because in those moments I start to think that I will never be capable of beginning to live a real life; because I have already begun to think that I have lost all sense of proportion, all sense of the real and the actual; because, what is more, I have cursed myself; because my nights of fantasy are followed by hideous moments of sobering! And all the time one hears the human crowd swirling and thundering around one in the whirlwind of life, one hears, one sees how people live—that they live in reality, that for them life is not something forbidden, that their lives are not scattered for the winds like dreams or visions but are forever in the process of renewal, forever young, and that no two moments in them are ever the same; while how dreary and monotonous to the point of being vulgar is timorous fantasy, the slave of shadow, of the idea...

…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!