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Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes

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Famous Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes

“You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, there's no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man's nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. And although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply extracting square roots. Here I, for instance, quite naturally want to live, in order to satisfy all my capacities for life, and not simply my capacity for reasoning, that is, not simply one twentieth of my capacity for life. What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning (some things, perhaps, it will never learn; this is a poor comfort, but why not say so frankly?) and human nature acts as a whole, with everything that is in it, consciously or unconsciously, and, even if it goes wrong, it lives.”

“Видишь, я тогда все се- бя спрашивал: зачем я так глуп, что если другие глу- пы и коли я знаю уж наверно, что они глупы, то сам не хочу быть умнее? Потом я узнал, Соня, что если ждать, пока все станут умными, то слишком уж дол- го будет… Потом я еще узнал, что никогда этого и не будет, что не переменятся люди, и не переделать их никому, и труда не стоит тратить! Да, это так! Это их закон… Закон, Соня! Это так!.. И я теперь знаю, Соня, что кто крепок и силен умом и духом, тот над ними и властелин! Кто много посмеет, тот у них и прав. Кто на большее может плюнуть, тот у них и законодатель, а кто больше всех может посметь, тот и всех правее! Так доселе велось и так всегда будет! Только слепой не разглядит!”

“Apparitions are, so to speak, shreds and fragments of other worlds, the first beginnings of them. There is, of course, no reason why a healthy man should see them, because a healthy man is mainly a being of this earth, and therefore for completeness and order he must live only this earthly life. But as soon as he falls ill, as soon as the normal earthly state of the organism is disturbed, the possibility of another world begins to appear, and as the illness increases, so do the contacts with the other world, so that at the moment of a man's death he enters fully into that world.”

“It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the riotous blood of youth. I bless the rising sun each day, and, as before, my heart sings to meet it, but now I love even more its setting, its long slanting rays and the soft, tender, gentle memories that come with them, the dear images from the whole of my long, happy life -- and over all the Divine Truth, softening, reconciling, forgiving! My life is ending, I know that well, but every day that is left me I feel how earthly life is in touch with a new infinite, unknown, but approaching life, the nearness of which sets my soul quivering with rapture, my mind glowing and my heart weeping with joy.”

“And who knows (one cannot vouch for it), perhaps the whole goal mankind strives for on earth consists just in this ceaselessness of the process of achievement alone, that is to say, in life itself, and not essentially in the goal, which, of course, is bound to be nothing other than two times two is four--that is, a formula; and two times two is four is no longer life, gentlemen, but the beginning of death.”