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Quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I squeezed my way through the crowd and saw a marvelous beauty, who could scarcely have reached her first season. But the beauty was pale and melancholy. She looked preoccupied; I even fancied that her eyes were red with recent weeping. The classic severity of every feature of her face gave a certain dignity and seriousness to her beauty. But through that sternness and dignity, through that melancholy, could be seen the look of childish innocence; something indescribably naïve, fluid, youthful, which seemed mutely begging for mercy.”

Quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Book:The Christmas Tree and the Wedding
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The Christmas Tree and the Wedding

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Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky

A renowned Russian novelist and a pioneer of psychological novels. His works deeply reveal the complexity of human nature and the injustice of society, having a profound impact on literature worldwide. more

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Beauty
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“Do you consider me beautiful?” I ask him this question every day, and each time, my voice carries the freshness of a first inquiry. This isn’t pretense; the authenticity of his response seems to escape my memory, prompting me to seek affirmation anew. His deep exhale fills the brief silence before he responds. “You realize that you are going to have to learn how to answer that question for yourself? You are like a treasurer, asking me to appraise the same ruby every day. While my intentions may lead me to always tell you the truth—that the ruby is invaluable and stunning—if one day I’m not around, you risk encountering someone who, with less honest intentions, might convince you to undervalue it, to give it away for nothing.”

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Book:Chani's Stone and A Prince of Netherus
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“Do you know that, maybe, I shall leave off grieving over the crime and sin of my life? for such a life is a crime and a sin. And do not imagine that I have been exaggerating anything—for goodness’ sake don't think that, Nastenka: for at times such misery comes over me, such misery.... Because it begins to seem to me at such times that I am incapable of beginning a life in real life, because it has seemed to me that I have lost all touch, all instinct for the actual, the real; because at last I have cursed myself; because after my fantastic nights I have moments of returning sobriety, which are awful!”

BeautyIsolationClassicsWhite Nights
Author:Fyodor Dostoevsky
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“Yale tried to say some­thing, but didn’t know how to be­gin. It had to do with a walk he once took with Nico and Richard around the Lin­coln Park la­goon, the two of them shar­ing Richard’s Le­ica. It struck Yale that day how they both had a way of in­ter­act­ing with the world that was si­mul­ta­ne­ously self­ish and gen­er­ous—grab­bing at beauty and re­flect­ing beauty back. The benches and fire hy­drants and man­hole cov­ers Nico and Richard stopped to pho­to­graph were made more beau­ti­ful by their notic­ing. They were left more beau­ti­ful, once they walked away. By the end of the day, Yale found him­self see­ing things in frames, saw the way the light hit fence posts, wanted to lap up the rip­ples of sun on a record store win­dow. He said, “I get it, I do.”

BeautyReflectionPresence
Book:The Great Believers
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