Dostoyevsky
“We are so divorced from it [life] that we feel at once a sort of loathing for real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have come almost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and we are all privately agreed that it is better in books.”
—Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (via nymphora)
December 2010
28 posts
“I don’t need money, or, better, it’s not money that I need; it’s not even power; I need only what is obtained by power and simply cannot be obtained without power: the solitary and calm awareness of strength! That is the fullest definition of freedom, which the world so struggles over!”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Adolescent (via ryannapier)
“Can a man possessing conciousness ever really respect himself?”
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
“
I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year. I feel I know you so well that I couldn’t have known you better if we’d been friends for twenty years. You won’t fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you’ve made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you’ve reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts.
When I woke up it seemed to me that some snatch of a tune I had known for a long time, I had heard somewhere before but had forgotten, a melody of great sweetness, was coming back to me now. It seemed to me that it had been trying to emerge from my soul all my life, and only now-
If and when you fall in love, may you be happy with her. I don’t need to wish her anything, for she’ll be happy with you. May your sky always be clear, may your dear smile always be bright and happy, and may you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn’t such a moment sufficient for the whole of one’s life?
” —White Nights
“…finally, I couldn’t imagine how I could live without books, and I stopped dreaming about marrying that Chinese prince…”
—Nastenka, from White Nights
“The other day I saw a wedding… But no! I would rather tell you about a Christmas tree. The wedding was superb. I liked it immensely. But the other incident was still finer. I don’t know why it is that the sight of the wedding reminded me of the Christmas tree.”
—The Christmas Tree and the Wedding opening lines
“If you kick me, you must believe in my reality, for people don’t kick ghosts.”
— Satan, The Brothers Karamazov (via theonlyphoenix)
“I was already hating you because I had lied to you. Because all I could do was only play around with words, dream a bit in my mind, but in reality d’you know what I want? I want to see you all in hell, that’s what! I want peace. Why, I would sell the whole world for a single kopek, just so that nobody would bother me.”
—Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (via couldlooklikedew)
“… my lodgings were my private domain, my shell, the case into which I withdrew from all mankind.”
—Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (via couldlooklikedew)
“And I will, naturally, go into a funk, as usual: I’ll simper and fuss before her, and wrap myself in my robe and smile and lie. Ugh, the vileness! But that is not the worst of it! There’s something even worse, nastier, lower — yes, lower! I will again put on that unconscionable, lying mask!…”
—Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (via couldlooklikedew)
“The Karamazovs are not blackguards, but philosophers; for all true Russians are philosophers…”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (via nov2)
“You believe in the crystal place, eternally indestructible, that is, one at which you can never stick out your tongue furtively nor make a rude gesture, even with your fist hidden away. Well, perhaps I’m so afraid of this building precisely because it’s made of crystal and it’s eternally indestructible, and because it won’t be possible to stick one’s tongue out even furtively.”
—Dostoevsky’s Notes From the Underground (via madmads)
“But that’s the horror of it, my noble friend, that all these accusations of mine, however outdated, however banal, however farcical—are still true!”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Gambler (via ryannapier)
“I just want to drag on until I’m thirty, and then-smash the cup on the floor!”
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (via dhawley)
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And he’ll sing Blueberry Hill for you!
