Alexander Bustrup > Alexander's Quotes

“Thus the expert in battle moves the enemy, and is not moved by him.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“How can a man of consciousness have the slightest respect for himself”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“One may know how to conquer without being able to do it. ”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong, and strike at what is weak.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

“the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

“And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), may be by his curse alone he will attain his object--that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key! If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated--chaos and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“The best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“I'll go this minute!' Of course, I remained.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness--a real thorough-going illness.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Where is it I've read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once. Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“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”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“The people who have nothing to lock up are the happy ones, aren't they?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“We have facts,’ they say. But facts are not everything—at least half the business lies in how you interpret them!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“They sat side by side, sad and weary, like shipwrecked sailors on a deserted shore.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“From a hundred rabbits you can’t make a horse, a hundred suspicions don’t make a proof,”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“It is almost better to tell your own lies than somebody else's truth; in the first case you are a man, in the second you are no better than a parrot!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World