Dostoyevsky

"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."

— Fyodor Dostoevsky- Crime and Punishment (via iforgottotakemypill)

"Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man."

— Fyodor Dostoevsky (via mtgardella)

(Source: thus-spoke-mia)

There, I’ve written you a love-letter, my God, what have I done! Alyosha, don’t despise me, and if I’ve done something wicked and have hurt you, forgive me. The secret that could ruin my reputation for ever is in your hands.

I will certainly cry today. Au revoir. I simply dread the thought of meeting you.

— The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky (via evangelicals)

"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."

— Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky (via yuhudit)

"Reading was, of course, a great help—it stirred, delighted, and tormented me. But at times it bored me terribly."

— Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, Notes from Underground (via hollownoise)

"Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it."

— Fyodor Dostoevsky (via amnesiac618)

Today, in 1881, D left this world.

"She was no more than fourteen, but that heart bad been broken, and had destroyed itself, savagely wounded by the outrage that had amazed and horrified her young childish conscience, overwhelmed her soul, pure as an angel’s, with unmerited shame, and torn from her a last cry of despair, unregarded, but defiantly shrieked into the dark night, into the blackness, the cold, the torrents of spring, while the wind howled…."

— Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment (via pisatofevrale)

"Only look about you: blood is being spilt in the streams, and in the merriest way, as though it were champagne."

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground, 1864 (via militantsnoozer)

toniiu:

Like the discovery of love, like the discovery of the sea, the discovery of Dostoevsky marks an important date in one’s life. This usually occurs in adolescence; maturity seeks out more serene writers.

—Jorge Luis Borges, prologue to Demons

"… And what is it that civilization softens in us? The only gain of civilization for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations— and absolutely nothing more. And through the development of this many-sidedness man may come to finding bloodshed"

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground (via daplaney)

(Source: augustuscarmichael)

"I almost do not exist now and I know it; God knows what lives in me in place of me."

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot (via ru2)

"I was so used to thinking and imagining everything from books, and to picturing everything in the world to myself as I had devised it beforehand in my dreams"

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground (via wakeupnietzsche)

"Why am I going there now? Am I capable of that? Is that serious? It is not serious at all. It’s simply a fantasy to amuse myself; a plaything! Yes, maybe it is a plaything."

— Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment. (via taiamadeleine)