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Fyodor Dostoevsky

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The wisest of all, in my opinion, is he who can, if only once a month, call himself a fool — a faculty unheard of nowadays.
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And so I ask myself: 'Where are your dreams?' And I shake my head and mutter: 'How the years go by!' And I ask myself again: 'What have you done with those years? Where have you buried your best moments? Have you really lived? Look,' I say to myself, 'how cold it is becoming all over the world!' And more years will pass and behind them will creep grim isolation. Tottering senility will come hobbling, leaning on a crutch, and behind these will come unrelieved boredom and despair. The world of fancies will fade, dreams will wilt and die and fall like autumn leaves from the trees. . . .
From White Nights
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In the end, you feel that your much-vaunted, inexhaustible fantasy is growing tired, debilitated, exhausted, because you're bound to grow out of your old ideals; they're smashed to splinters and turn to dust, and if you have no other life, you have no choice but to keep rebuilding your dreams from the splinters and dust. But the heart longs for something different! And it is vain to dig in the ashes of your old fancies, trying to find even a tiny spark to fan into a new flame that will warm the chilled heart and bring back to life everything that can send the blood rushing wildly through the body, fill the eyes with tears--everything that can delude you so well!
From White Nights
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My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?
From White Nights
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Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.
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Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.
From Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
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[...]it is necessary for a man to know and believe every moment that there is somewhere a perfect and peaceful happiness, for everyone and for everything … The whole law of human existence consists in nothing other than a man’s always being able to bow before the immeasurably great. If people are deprived of the immeasurably great, they will not live and will die in despair. The immeasurable and infinite is as necessary for man as the small planet he inhabits.
From Demons
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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!
From Crime and Punishment
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Quale sarebbe per me il modo migliore di morire?...Sì, insomma, voglio dire il modo...più degno possibile? Su, me lo dica!"
"Passi accanto a noi perdonandoci la nostra felicità!" proferì il principe a voce bassa.
From The Idiot
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What makes a hero? Courage, strength, morality, withstanding adversity? Are these the traits that truly show and create a hero? Is the light truly the source of darkness or vice versa? Is the soul a source of hope or despair? Who are these so called heroes and where do they come from? Are their origins in obscurity or in plain sight?
From Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
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Without God all things are permitted.
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The samovar has been on the boil since before eight, but.. gone out... like everything else in the world. Even the sun, it's they say, will go out eventually. However, if necessary, I'll start it going again.
From Demons
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The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.
From Crime and Punishment
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From under her relentless hatred of you, which is sincere and absolute, shines love at every moment and... madness... the most sincere and boundless love, and - madness! Conversely, from under the love she feels for me, also sincerely, there shines hatred at every moment - the greatest hatred! Until now I could never have imagined all these "metamorphoses".
From Demons
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I swear, I loved you less yesterday. Why, then, are you trying to take everything away from me today? Do you know what it's cost me, this fresh hope? I've paid for it with a life.
From Demons
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But how could you live and have no story to tell?
From White Nights
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The wisest of all, in my opinion, is he who can, if only once a month, call himself a fool — a faculty unheard of nowadays.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And so I ask myself: 'Where are your dreams?' And I shake my head and mutter: 'How the years go by!' And I ask myself again: 'What have you done with those years? Where have you buried your best moments? Have you really lived? Look,' I say to myself, 'how cold it is becoming all over the world!' And more years will pass and behind them will creep grim isolation. Tottering senility will come hobbling, leaning on a crutch, and behind these will come unrelieved boredom and despair. The world of fancies will fade, dreams will wilt and die and fall like autumn leaves from the trees. . . .
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
In the end, you feel that your much-vaunted, inexhaustible fantasy is growing tired, debilitated, exhausted, because you're bound to grow out of your old ideals; they're smashed to splinters and turn to dust, and if you have no other life, you have no choice but to keep rebuilding your dreams from the splinters and dust. But the heart longs for something different! And it is vain to dig in the ashes of your old fancies, trying to find even a tiny spark to fan into a new flame that will warm the chilled heart and bring back to life everything that can send the blood rushing wildly through the body, fill the eyes with tears--everything that can delude you so well!
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.
From Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
[...]it is necessary for a man to know and believe every moment that there is somewhere a perfect and peaceful happiness, for everyone and for everything … The whole law of human existence consists in nothing other than a man’s always being able to bow before the immeasurably great. If people are deprived of the immeasurably great, they will not live and will die in despair. The immeasurable and infinite is as necessary for man as the small planet he inhabits.
From Demons
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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!
From Crime and Punishment
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Quale sarebbe per me il modo migliore di morire?...Sì, insomma, voglio dire il modo...più degno possibile? Su, me lo dica!"
"Passi accanto a noi perdonandoci la nostra felicità!" proferì il principe a voce bassa.
From The Idiot
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
What makes a hero? Courage, strength, morality, withstanding adversity? Are these the traits that truly show and create a hero? Is the light truly the source of darkness or vice versa? Is the soul a source of hope or despair? Who are these so called heroes and where do they come from? Are their origins in obscurity or in plain sight?
From Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Without God all things are permitted.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The samovar has been on the boil since before eight, but.. gone out... like everything else in the world. Even the sun, it's they say, will go out eventually. However, if necessary, I'll start it going again.
From Demons
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.
From Crime and Punishment
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
From under her relentless hatred of you, which is sincere and absolute, shines love at every moment and... madness... the most sincere and boundless love, and - madness! Conversely, from under the love she feels for me, also sincerely, there shines hatred at every moment - the greatest hatred! Until now I could never have imagined all these "metamorphoses".
From Demons
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I swear, I loved you less yesterday. Why, then, are you trying to take everything away from me today? Do you know what it's cost me, this fresh hope? I've paid for it with a life.
From Demons
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But how could you live and have no story to tell?
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The wisest of all, in my opinion, is he who can, if only once a month, call himself a fool — a faculty unheard of nowadays.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And so I ask myself: 'Where are your dreams?' And I shake my head and mutter: 'How the years go by!' And I ask myself again: 'What have you done with those years? Where have you buried your best moments? Have you really lived? Look,' I say to myself, 'how cold it is becoming all over the world!' And more years will pass and behind them will creep grim isolation. Tottering senility will come hobbling, leaning on a crutch, and behind these will come unrelieved boredom and despair. The world of fancies will fade, dreams will wilt and die and fall like autumn leaves from the trees. . . .
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
In the end, you feel that your much-vaunted, inexhaustible fantasy is growing tired, debilitated, exhausted, because you're bound to grow out of your old ideals; they're smashed to splinters and turn to dust, and if you have no other life, you have no choice but to keep rebuilding your dreams from the splinters and dust. But the heart longs for something different! And it is vain to dig in the ashes of your old fancies, trying to find even a tiny spark to fan into a new flame that will warm the chilled heart and bring back to life everything that can send the blood rushing wildly through the body, fill the eyes with tears--everything that can delude you so well!
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.
From Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
[...]it is necessary for a man to know and believe every moment that there is somewhere a perfect and peaceful happiness, for everyone and for everything … The whole law of human existence consists in nothing other than a man’s always being able to bow before the immeasurably great. If people are deprived of the immeasurably great, they will not live and will die in despair. The immeasurable and infinite is as necessary for man as the small planet he inhabits.
From Demons
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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!
From Crime and Punishment
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Quale sarebbe per me il modo migliore di morire?...Sì, insomma, voglio dire il modo...più degno possibile? Su, me lo dica!"
"Passi accanto a noi perdonandoci la nostra felicità!" proferì il principe a voce bassa.
From The Idiot
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
What makes a hero? Courage, strength, morality, withstanding adversity? Are these the traits that truly show and create a hero? Is the light truly the source of darkness or vice versa? Is the soul a source of hope or despair? Who are these so called heroes and where do they come from? Are their origins in obscurity or in plain sight?
From Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Without God all things are permitted.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The samovar has been on the boil since before eight, but.. gone out... like everything else in the world. Even the sun, it's they say, will go out eventually. However, if necessary, I'll start it going again.
From Demons
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.
From Crime and Punishment
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
From under her relentless hatred of you, which is sincere and absolute, shines love at every moment and... madness... the most sincere and boundless love, and - madness! Conversely, from under the love she feels for me, also sincerely, there shines hatred at every moment - the greatest hatred! Until now I could never have imagined all these "metamorphoses".
From Demons
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I swear, I loved you less yesterday. Why, then, are you trying to take everything away from me today? Do you know what it's cost me, this fresh hope? I've paid for it with a life.
From Demons
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But how could you live and have no story to tell?
From White Nights
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