#dostoevsky
“The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Do you know I’ve been sitting here thinking to myself: that if I didn’t believe in life, if I lost faith in the woman I love, lost faith in the order of things, were convinced in fact that everything is a disorderly, damnable, and perhaps devil-ridden chaos, if I were struck by every horror of man’s disillusionment – still I should want to live. Having once tasted of the cup, I would not turn away from it till I had drained it! At thirty though, I shall be sure to leave the cup even if I’ve not emptied it, and turn away – where I don’t know. But till I am thirty I know that my youth will triumph over everything – every disillusionment, every disgust with life. I’ve asked myself many times whether there is in the world any despair that could overcome this frantic thirst for life. And I’ve come to the conclusion that there isn’t, that is until I am thirty.”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“The more stupid one is, the closer one is to reality. The more stupid one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence squirms and hides itself. Intelligence is unprincipled, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference.”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
“This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness.”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Love life more than the meaning of it.”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“I think the devil doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Compassion is the chief law of human existence.”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky
“If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Insulted and Humiliated
“Love a man, even in his sin, for that love is a likeness of the divine love, and is the summit of love on earth.”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky
“The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“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.”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
“What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“Love children especially, for they too are sinless like the angels; they live to soften and purify our hearts and, as it were, to guide us.”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it … one must have the courage to dare.”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“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.”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“When reason fails, the devil helps!”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“It was a marvelous night, the sort of night one only experiences when one is young. The sky was so bright, and there were so many stars that, gazing upward, one couldn’t help wondering how so many whimsical, wicked people could live under such a sky.”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky
James Baldwin, on reading:
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people. An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else in the world cantell, what it is like to be alive. All I’ve ever wanted to do is to tell that. I’m not trying to solve anybody’s problems, not even my own. I’m just trying to outline what the problems are.”
(frominterview in Life magazine, May 24, 1963)
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