Nice Quotes #135: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Every man looks out for himself, and he has the happiest life who manages to hoodwink himself best of all.
Every man looks out for himself, and he has the happiest life who manages to hoodwink himself best of all.
At first it was simply liking, Nastenka, but now, now !
I am just in the same position as you were when you went to him with your bundle. In a worse position than you, Nastenka,because he cared for no one else as you do.
What is honour, my dear, when you have nothing to eat?
I suddenly felt that it was all the same to me whether the world existed or whether there had never been anything at all: I began to feel with all my being that there was nothing existing. At first I fancied that many things had existed in the past, but afterwards I guessed that there never had been anything in the past either, but that it had only seemed so for some reason. Little by little I guessed that there would be nothing in the future either. Then I left off being angry with people and almost ceased to notice them. Indeed this showed itself even in the pettiest trifles: I used, for instance, to knock against people in the street. And not so much from being lost in thought: what had I to think about? I had almost given up thinking by that time; nothing mattered to me. If at least I had solved my problems! Oh, I had not settled one of them, and how many there were! But I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.
كل أعمال الانسان تتألف في الحقيقة من شيء واحد فقط هو اثباته لنفسه في كل لحظة
How anxiously I yearned for those I had forsaken.
Reality is infinitely diverse, compared with even the subtlest conclusions of abstract thought, and does not allow of clear-cut and sweeping distinctions. Reality resists classification.
Generally speaking, our prisoners were capable of loving animals, and if they had been allowed they would have delighted to rear large numbers of domestic animals and birds in the prison. And I wonder what other activity could better have softened and refined their harsh and brutal natures than this. But it was not allowed. Neither the regulations nor the nature of the prison made it possible.
But gamblers know how a man can sit for almost twenty-four hours at cards, without looking to right, or to left.
At last my heart was too full.
10
I got entangled in my own data, and my conclusion directly contradicts the original idea from which I start. Starting from unlimited freedom, I conclude with unlimited despotism. I will add, however, that apart from my solution of the social formula, there can be no other.