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Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881) Russian writer
- I am a ridiculous man. They call me a madman now. That would be a distinct rise in my social position were it not that they still regard me as being as ridiculous as ever.
- Dream of a Ridiculous Man
Notes from the Underground (1864)
- I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased.
- To be acutely conscious is a disease, a real, honest-to-goodness disease.
- When… in the course of all these thousands of years has man ever acted in accordance with his own interests?
- Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself, and every decent man has a considerable number of such things stored away. That is, one can even say that the more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind.
Crime and Punishment (1866)
- Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel.
- Talking nonsense is man's only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms.
- "You're a gentleman," they used to say to him. "You shouldn't have gone murdering people with a hatchet; that's no occupation for a gentleman."
- Do a man dirt, yourself you hurt.
The Brothers Karamazov (1879-1880)
- People talk sometimes of a bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if hee were able to do it.
- I think if the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.
- If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force mantaining the life of the world would at once be dried up.
- Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side.
- In most cases, people, even the most vicious, are much more naive and simple-minded than we assume them to be. And this is true of ourselves too.
- The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.
- A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying-to others and to yourself.
- A more extensive variant translation: Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete beastiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea— he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility… Do get up from your knees and sit down, I beg you, these posturings are false, too.
- Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those they have slain.
- So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find some one to worship.
- If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.
- "Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are to blame for them."
The Insulted and the Injured (1861)
- 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.
Attributed
- "Trust no one in whom the desire to punish is strong"
- (Similar statements were definitely made by Nietzsche, and are attributed to Goethe.)
- The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.
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