Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and journalist. His literary works explore human psychology in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. His most acclaimed novels include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880).
Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as multiple of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces. His 1864 novella Notes from Underground is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature. As such, he is also looked upon as a philosopher and theologian as well.
(Russian: Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский) (see also Fiodor Dostoïevski)
“We degrade God too much, ascribing to him our ideas, in vexation at being unable to understand Him.”
“Ja na sve pristajem, samo nek je meni dobro.”
“...Imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny creature, that same child who was beating her chest with her little fist, and raise your edifice on the foundation of her unrequited tears--would you agree to be the architect on such conditions?”
“Glupan koji je postao svestan da je glupan nije vise glupan.”
“Tajna covecjeg zivota nije u tome da samo zivi, vec u tome zasto zivi.”
“You know, my boy, he said, it's impossible to love men such as they are. And yet we must. So try to do good to men by doing violence to your feelings, holding your nose, and shutting your eyes, especially shutting your eyes. Endure their villainy without anger, as much as possible; try to remember that you're a man too. For, if you're even a little above average intelligence, you'll have the propensity to judge people severely. Men are vile by nature and they'd rather love out of fear. Don't give in to such love: despise it always.”
“When I am upstairs in my little garret I have only to remember and imagine the rustle of your dress, and I am ready to bite off my hands.”
“المرء يكون أقرب إلى الحقيقة حين يكون غبيا. إن الغباء يمضي نحو الهدف رأسا ، دون لف ودوران غامضين ، الغباء بساطة وإيجاز ، أما الذكاء فمكر ومخاتلة. إن الفكر الذكي فاجر فاسد ، أما الغباء فمستقيم شريف . . .”
“An elder was one who took your soul, your will, into his soul and his will. When you choose an elder, you renounce your own will and yield it to him in complete submission, complete self-abnegation" just like some Muslims who conseiders their sheikh as holy, some christians worship their (elder)”
“With old liars who have been acting all their lives there are moments when they enter so completely into their part that they tremble or shed tears in earnest, although at that very moment, or a second later, they are able to whisper to themselves, "You know you are lying, you shameless old sinner! You're acting now, in spite of your 'holy' wrath.”
“Tyranny is a habit; it may develop, and it does develop at last, into a disease. I maintain that the very best of men may be coarsened and hardened into a brute by habit. Blood and power intoxicate; coarseness and depravity are developed; the mind and the heart are tolerant of the most abnormal things, till at last they come to relish them. The man and the citizen is lost for ever in the tyrant, and the return to human dignity, to repentance and regeneration becomes almost impossible.”
“In place of dialectics, life had arrived.”
“Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from the faith.”