Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“I wanted to find out then and quickly whether I was a louse like everybody else or a man. Whether I can step over barriers or not, whether I dare stoop to pick up or not, whether I am a trembling creature or whether I have the right...F”

“I saw clear as daylight how strange it is that not a single person living in this mad world has had the daring to go straight for it all and send it flying to the devil! I...I wanted to have the daring...and I killed her.”

“Reality is infinitely diverse. It resists classification, inward life. Peculiar to us...not simply the official existence.”

“Beauty is a riddle”

“Karıkoca arasında geçenleri, nasıl seviştiklerini kimse bilmemeli, hiç kimse. Kavgalarını öz analarından bile saklamalı, birbirlerinden şikâyet ederek kimseden hakemliğini istememelidirler. Her müşkülü kendi aralarında halletmeleri lazımdır. Aşk kutsal bir sırdır, sevişenler arasında ne geçerse, yabancı gözlerden saklanmalıdır. Bu onun kutsallığını bir kat daha artırır. Böyle çiftler birbirlerini daha çok sayarlar ki, saygı pek çok şeyin temelidir. Ortada aşk olduktan, sevişerek evlendikten sonra bu sevgi niçin sönsün?”

“Yes, yes, it ended in my corrupting them all! How it could come to pass I do not know, but I remember it clearly. The dream embraced thousands of years and left in me only a sense of the whole. I only know that I was the cause of their sin and downfall. Like a vile trichina, like a germ of the plague infecting whole kingdoms, so I contaminated all this earth, so happy and sinless before my coming. They learnt to lie, grew fond of lying, and discovered the charm of falsehood. Oh, at first perhaps it began innocently, with a jest, coquetry, with amorous play, perhaps indeed with a germ, but that germ of falsity made its way into their hearts and pleased them. Then sensuality was soon begotten, sensuality begot jealousy, jealousy—cruelty . . . Oh, I don't know, I don't remember; but soon, very soon the first blood was shed. They marvelled and were horrified, and began to be split up and divided. They formed into unions, but it was against one another. Reproaches, upbraidings followed. They came to know shame, and shame brought them to virtue. The conception of honour sprang up, and every union began waving its flags. They began torturing animals, and the animals withdrew from them into the forests and became hostile to them. They began to struggle for separation, for isolation, for individuality, for mine and thine. They began to talk in different languages. They became acquainted with sorrow and loved sorrow; they thirsted for suffering, and said that truth could only be attained through suffering. Then science appeared. As they became wicked they began talking of brotherhood and humanitarianism, and understood those ideas. As they became criminal, they invented justice and drew up whole legal codes in order to observe it, and to ensure their being kept, set up a guillotine. They hardly remembered what they had lost, in fact refused to believe that they had ever been happy and innocent. They even laughed at the possibility o this happiness in the past, and called it a dream. They could not even imagine it in definite form and shape, but, strange and wonderful to relate, though they lost all faith in their past happiness and called it a legend, they so longed to be happy and innocent once more that they succumbed to this desire like children, made an idol of it, set up temples and worshipped their own idea, their own desire; though at the same time they fully believed that it was unattainable and could not be realised, yet they bowed down to it and adored it with tears! Nevertheless, if it could have happened that they had returned to the innocent and happy condition which they had lost, and if someone had shown it to them again and had asked them whether they wanted to go back to it, they would certainly have refused. They answered me: "We may be deceitful, wicked and unjust, we know it and weep over it, we grieve over it; we torment and punish ourselves more perhaps than that merciful Judge Who will judge us and whose Name we know not. But we have science, and by the means of it we shall find the truth and we shall arrive at it consciously. Knowledge is higher than feeling, the consciousness of life is higher than life. Science will give us wisdom, wisdom will reveal the laws, and the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness.”

“...günah işlemeye önce şakalarla, oynaşmalarla; aşk oyunlarıyla başladılar... Adeta hızla yayılan atom molekülleri gibi günah kalplerinin, benliklerinin derinliklerine kadar işledi.Yalan, şehveti; şehvet, kıskançlığı; kıskançlık ise, kötülüğü tetikledi... Ve ilk kan döküldü. Kan, beraberinde korkuyu getirdi.Dağılmaya ve kutuplaşmaya başladılar.Kutuplaşma, karşılıklı itirafları ve suçlamaları doğurdu.Utanma duygusunu tattılar, utanmayı iffet sandılar.Şanı ve şöhreti keşfettiler.Her toplum kendine, onu bir diğerinden üstün kılan ve onu diğerlerinden ayrıştıran simgeler buldu.Doğaya ve canlılara saldırdılar. hayvanlar onları terk ettiler, uzaklara kaçıp dağlara,ormanların derinliklerine saklandılar.Birbirleriyle ve de doğayla düşman oldular.Kah ayrılmak için, kah birleşmek için; onun için, bunun için birbirleriyle kıyasıya dövüştüler. Savaştıkça birbirlerinden daha çok koptular.Dilleri, töreleri başkalaştı; birbirlerini anlamaz oldular.Kederi öğrendiler, fakat kederlenmeyi ve acı çekmeyi lütuf saydılar...Hakikate ulaşmanın ancak ve ancak acı çekmekle mümkün olabileceğini düşündüler.Önce hastalığı, ardından tedavisini buldular.Önce düşmanlığı yarattılar, ardından kardeşliğin ve insani değerlerin iyi birer savunucusu oldular.Suç, beraberinde adaleti ve yasaları getirdi; Adalet ise, giyotini..." (Gülünç Bir Adamın Düşü adlı öyküden)”

“No es mi inteligencia la que me ayuda, sino el diablo.”

“Now, I did know a certain young lady of the 'romantic' generation of not so long ago who, after being mysteriously in love for several years with a certain gentleman whom she could have married at any time without the least difficulty, suddenly broke off their relationship, inventing for herself all manner of insurmountable obstacles, and one stormy night plunged from a high, precipitous cliff into a fairly deep and fast-flowing river, where she perished from her own caprice solely through her attempt to imitate Shakespeare's Ophelia, for, had the precipice, which she had long before singled out and been compulsively drawn to, been less picturesque, and had there been only a prosaically flat bank in its stead, perhaps there would have been no suicide at all.”

“In spite of the momentary desire he had just been feeling for company of any sort, on being actually spoken to he felt immediately his habitual irritable and uneasy aversion for any stranger who approached or attempted to approach him.”

“Sentiría en el alma que te hubieras contaminado de esa enfermedad de moda que se llama ateísmo.”

“Precious memories may remain even of a bad home, if only the hearth knows how to find what is precious”

“Fakat yüzüncü defa söylüyorum ki, insanın kasten, şuurlu olarak zararlı, manasız, hatta son derece budalaca bir arzuya kapıldığı bir durum, tek bir durum vardır.: yalnız akla uygun şeyler istemek zorunda kalmayıp, ne kadar manasız olursa olsun "istemek hakkına" sahiptir.”

“Bölmenin öbür yanından çalar saatin, birinin son nefesini andıran hırıltılı sesi duyuldu. Tabii olmayan bu uzun hırıltıyı yere bir şey devrilince çıkan sesi andıran tiz, gayet çirkin sesler takip etti. Saat ikiyi çalmıştı. Birden kendime geldim; zaten derin uyumuyor, biraz kestiriyordum.Kocaman bir elbise dolabı, şuraya buraya dağılmış şapka, elbise kutuları, bir sürü paçavralar, elbise parçaları, dar, basık, karanlık odayı tıka basa doldurmuştu. Odanın bir ucunda, masanın üstünde duran mum parçası tükenmek üzereydi. Zaman zaman hafifçe parlayıveriyordu. Birkaç dakika sonra ortalık tam bir karanlığa gömülecekti.Ayılmam güç olmadı; her şey birdenbire, kolaylıkla, saldırmak için fırsat kolluyormuş gibi kafama hücum ediverdi. Zaten ondan önce de zihnimin bir köşesinde, bir türlü silemediğim, uykulu hayallerimin etrafında dolaştığı sabit bir nokta vardı sanki: İşin tuhafı, uyandıktan sonra o gün başıma gelenlerin hepsini, uzun süre önce, çoktan olup bitmiş şeyler gibi hatırladım.Kafam iyice sersem gibiydi. Sanki kafamın üstümde bir şey uçarak bana çarpıyor, kışkırtıyor, rahatsız ediyordu. İçimde yine sıkıntı ve hırs kabarıyor, taşacak yol arıyordu. Birdenbire yanımda beni merak ve ısrarla inceleyen bir çift göz gördüm. Bakışı soğuk, kayıtsız, gamlı, tamamıyla yabancıydı ve insana ağırlık veriyordu.Kafamda kasvetli bir düşünce beliriverdi ve tıpkı rutubetli, havasız yeraltına inerken duyduğum sıkıcı duyguyu andıran berbat bir duygu vücuduma yayıldı. Kara gözlerin beni ancak şimdi incelemeye başlaması hiç de tabii değildi. Bu mahlûkla iki saat içinde tek kelime konuşmadığımı, buna hiç lüzum görmediğimi hatırladım; hatta demin bu halden hoşlanmıştım bile. O anda, aşkın olmadığı yerde olanca kabalığı ve hayasızlığıyla başlayan fuhşun manasızlığını ve örümcek misali iğrenç bir şey olduğunu apaçık görebiliyordum.”

“Dinlemek isteseniz de, istemeseniz de, şimdi size niçin bir haşere bile olamadığımı anlatmak istiyorum baylar. Tamamıyla ciddi olarak söyleyeyim ki, böcek olmayı çoğu zaman arzuladım. Yazık ki buna bile layık olamadım. Baylar, yemin ederim ki, her şeyi fazlasıyla anlamak bir hastalıktır; gerçek, tam manasıyla bir hastalık. İnsana, gündelik hayatını sürdürmesi için gereken anlayışın yarısı, hatta dörtte biri dahi, yeryüzünün en soyut, en inatçı şehri olan Petersburg’da oturmak gibi katmerli bir felakete uğramış, talihsiz on dokuzuncu yüzyıl aydınımıza yeterdi. (Öyle ya, şehirlerin de inatçı olanları ve olmayanları vardır.) Şu halde insan, örneğin içi dışı bir, işadamı denen kimselerin sahip olduğu anlayışla yetinmelidir. Bahse girerim ki, bunları gösteriş olsun diye, hem de kılıcını şıkırdatan subayımızınki türünden zevksiz bir gösteriş için, işadamlarını alaya alarak yazdığımı sanıyorsunuz. Fakat baylar, siz hiç hastalıklarıyla övünen, hele bunlarla gösteriş yapmaya kalkışan birini gördünüz mü?”

“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 in the world any despair that would overcome this frantic and perhaps unseemly thirst for life in me, and I've come to the conclusion that there isn't...”

“Do you know I don't know how one can walk by a tree and not be happy at the sight of it? How can one talk to a man and not be happy in loving him! Oh, it's only that I'm not able to express it...And what beautiful things there are at every step, that even the most hopeless man must feel to be beautiful! Look at a child! Look at God's sunrise! Look at the grass, how it grows! Look at the eyes that gaze at you and love you!”

“...The men of those days...were absolutely not the same people that we are now; it was not the same race as now, in our age, really, it seems we are a different species...In those days they were men of one idea, but now we are more nervous, more developed, more sensitive; men capable of two or three ideas at once...Modern men are broader-minded - and I swear that this prevents their being so all-of-a-piece as they were in those days.”

“In Russia, drunks are our kindest people. Our kindest people are also the most drunk.”

“It is curious that this man who, even in my childhood, made such an impression upon me, who had such a crucial influence on the whole bent of my mind, and who perhaps has even cast his shadow over the whole of my future, still remains, even now, a complete enigma to me in many respects.”

“Listen, in dreams and especially in nightmares, from indigestion or anything, a man sees sometimes such artistic visions, such complex and real actuality, such events, even a whole world of events, woven into such a plot, with such unexpected details from the most exalted matters to the last button on a cuff, as I swear Leo Tolstoy has never invented.”

“I was seeking within myself the human being I had so long lost sight of, hoping that my passion had only been distorted but had never been completely suppressed, by the social illusion, by the dominant ideal of “concealing emotions”. I wished to shout: “I broke away from your cold and petrified world in which I was one of the wheels running noiselessly in the great machine, one of the idle wheels. I have plunged into an unknown abyss; and in this one hour of the plunge I have lived more fully than in all sheltered years in your circle. I do not belong to you anymore, I may be on the heights or in the depths, but never shall I return to the dead levels of your philistine comfort.”

“Have you seen a leaf, a leaf from a tree?""I have. ""I saw one recently, a yellow one, with some green,decayed on the edges. Blown about by the wind. When I was 10 years old, I'd close my eyes on purpose, in winter, and imagine a leaf – green, bright, with veins, and the sun shining. I'd open my eyes and not believe it, because it was so good, then I'd close them again. ""What's that, an allegory?""N-no... Why? Not an allegory, simply a leaf, one leaf. A leaf is good. Everything is good.""Everything? ""Everything. Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy; only because of that. It's everything, everything! Whoever learns will at once immediately become happy, that same moment. This mother-in-law will die and the girl won't remain – everything is good. I discovered suddenly. ""And if someone dies of hunger, or someone offends and dishonors the girl – is that good? ""Good. And if someone's head get smashed in for the child's sake, that's good, too; and if it doesn't get smashed in, that's good, too. Everything is good, everything. For all those who know that everything is good. If they knew it was good with them, it would be good with them, but as long as they don't know it's good with them, it will not be good with them. That's the whole thought, the whole, there isn't any more! ""And when did you find out that you were so happy? ""Last week, on Tuesday, no, Wednesday, because it was Wednesday by then, in the night. ”

“He wants money for nothing, without waiting or working! We’ve grown used to having everything ready made, to walking on crutches, to having our food chewed for us. Then the great hour struck, and every man showed himself in his true colors.”

“The vast mass of mankind is mere material, and only exists in order by some great effort, by some mysterious process, by means of some crossing of races and stocks, to bring into the world at last perhaps one man out of a thousand with a spark of independence.”

“There is silent and long-suffering sorrow to be met with among the peasantry. It withdraws into itself and is still. But there is a grief that breaks out, and from that minute it bursts into tears and finds vent in wailing. This is particularly common with women. But it is no lighter a grief than the silent. Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more. Such grief does not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense of its hopelessness. Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to reopen the wound.”

“All we Karamazovs are such insects. And angel as you are, that insect lives in you, too, and will stir up a tempest in your blood. Tempests, because sensual lust is a tempest - worse than a tempest! Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed, for God sets before us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side. I am not an educated nor cultured man, Alyosha, but I've thought a lot about this. It's terrible what mysteries there are! Too many riddles weigh men down on earth. We must solve as we can, and try to keep a dry skin in the water. Beauty! I can't bear the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom. What's still more awful is that a man with the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal of the Madonna, and his heart may be on fire with that ideal, genuinely on fire, just as in his days of youth and innocence. Yes, man is broad, too broad. I'd have him narrower. The devil only knows what to make of it! What to the mind is shameful is beauty and nothing else to the heart. Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in Sodom. Did you know that secret? 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.”

“our fatal troika dashes on in her headlong flight perhaps to destruction and in all Russia for long past men have stretched out imploring hands and called a halt to its furious reckless course.”

“No prize , however great can justify an ounce of self deception or a small departure of the ugly facts. ( Notes from Underground)”

“I could never stand more than three months of dreaming at a time without feeling an irresistible desire to plunge into society. To plunge into society meant to visit my superior at the office, Anton Antonitch Syetotchkin. He was the only permanent acquaintance I have had in my life, and I wonder at the fact myself now. But I only went to see him when that phase came over me, and when my dreams had reached such a point of bliss that it became essential at once to embrace my fellows and all mankind; and for that purpose I needed, at least, one human being, actually existing. I had to call on Anton Antonitch, however, on Tuesday—his at-home day; so I had always to time my passionate desire to embrace humanity so that it might fall on a Tuesday.”

“I am an inveterate buffoon, and been from birth up, your reverence, it's as though it were a craze in me. I dare say it's a devil within me. But only a little one. A more serious one would have chosen another lodging.”

“...he was by no means expansive, and talked little indeed, but not from shyness or a sullen unsociability; quite the contrary, from something different, from a sort of inner preoccupation entirely personal and unconcerned with other people, but so important to him that he seemed, as it were, to forget other on account of it.”

“All night, the black serpant of wounded vanity gnawed his heart.”

“The general never regretted his early marriage, or regarded it as a foolish youthful escapade; and he so respected and feared his wife that he was very near loving her.”

“How can you tell a man there’s nothing to do? I can’t imagine a situation in which there could ever be nothing to do! Do it for mankind and don’t worry about the rest. There’s so much to do that a lifetime won’t be enough, if you look around attentively.”

“For men are made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, ‘I am doing God's will on earth.’ All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.”

“The Russian soul is a dark place.”

“He who despises most things will be a law-giver among them.”

“Thus a man will sometimes suffer half an hour of mortal fear with a robber, but once the knife is finally at his throat, even fear vanishes.”

“I darted like a minnow through passers-by, in a most ungraceful fashion, constantly giving way to generals. officers of the Horse Guards and the Hussars, and fine ladies; at those moments I felt a spasmodic pain in my heart and hot flushes down my spine at the thought of the wretched inadequacy of my costume and the mean vulgarity of my small figure darting about.”

“Grown-up people do not know that a child can give exceedingly good advice even in the most difficult case.”

“I'm drunk but truthful.”

“I don't need you to tell me I'm not well, though I don't really know what's wrong with me; I think I'm five times healthier than you are.”

“they may all be drunk at my place, but they're all honest, and though we do lie-because I lie, too-in the end we'll lie our way to the truth”

“Look, suppose that there was one among all those who desire nothing but material and filthy lucre, that one, at least, is like my old Inquisitor, who himself ate roots in the desert and raved, overcoming his flesh, in order to make himself free and perfect, but who still loved mankind all his life, and suddenly opened his eyes and he saw that there is no great moral blessedness in achieving perfection of the will only to become convinced, at the same time, that millions of the rest of God's creatures have been set up only for mockery, that they will never be strong enough to manage their freedom, that from such pitiful rebels will never come giants to complete the tower, that it was not for such geese that the great idealist dreamt his dream of harmony.”

“Beauty is not only a terrible thing, it is also a mysterious thing. There God and the Devil strive for mastery, and the battleground is the heart of men.”

“Repeat to yourself every day and as often as you can: ‘O Lord, have mercy on all those who will appear before You today.’ For every hour, every second, thousands of men leave this world and their souls appear before the Lord, and no one knows how many of them leave this earth in isolation, sadness, and anguish, with no one to take pity on them or even care whether they live or die. And so your prayer for such a man will rise to the Lord from the other end of the earth, although he may never have heard of you or you of him. But his soul, as it stands trembling before the Lord, will be cheered and gladdened to learn that there is someone on earth who loves him. And the Lord’s mercy will be even greater to both of you, for, however great your pity for the man, God’s pity will be much greater, for He is infinitely more merciful and more loving than you are.”

“Indeed, people speak sometimes about the ‘animal’ cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to animals, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel”

“My God, but what do I care about the laws of nature and arithmetic if for some reason these laws and two times two is four are not to my liking? To be sure, I won't break through such a wall with my forehead if I really have not got strength to do it, but neither will I be reconciled with it simply because I have a stone wall here and have not got strength enough.”

“And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better - cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?”