Adam > Adam's Quotes

“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

“When reason fails, the devil helps!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“the most offensive is not their lying—one can always forgive lying—lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth—what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying…”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Young man, that there is such a thing as prosperity or, as they now say, progress, if only in the name of science and economic truth...

A common place!

No, it is not a common place, sir! If up to now, for example I have been told to love my neighbor, and I did love him, what came of it? What came of it was that I tore my caftan in two, shared it with my neighbor, and we were both left half naked, as the Russian proverb says: if you chase several hares at once, you won't catch any of them. But science says: love yourself before all, because everything in the world is based on self-interest. If you love only yourself, you will set your affairs up properly, and your caftan will also remain in one piece. And economic truth adds that the more properly arranged personal affairs and, so to speak, whole caftans there are in society, the firmer its foundations are and the better arranged its common cause. It follows that by acquiring solely and exclusively for myself, I am thereby precisely acquiring for everyone, as it were, and working so that my neighbor will have something more than a torn caftan, not from private, isolated generosities now, but as a result of universal prosperity. A simple though, which unfortunately has been too long in coming, overshadowed by rapturousness and dreaminess, though it seems it would not take much wit to realize...”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Man in general finds it extremely pleasant to be insulted—have you noticed? But it's especially so with women. One might even say it's their only provender.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Everything depends on what circumstances and what environment man lives in. Environment is everything, and man himself is nothing.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Life itself was an enigma requiring explication. Like trying to guess what a soul is like from a brief glimpse of a human face, so the cryptic countenance of life invites deeper investigation. Cosmic and personal questions are forever the preoccupation of thoughtful people who seek to understand life's secrets.”
― David Naugle

“You keep laughing, and very inappropriately, if I may say so. You don't understand anything! There are no such roles in a commune. Communes are set up precisely so that there will be no such roles. In a commune, the present essence of this role will be entirely changed, and what is stupid here will become intelligent there, what is unnatural here, under the present circumstances, will there become perfectly natural. Everything depends on what circumstances and what environment man lives in. Environment is everything, and man himself is nothing.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The question was being debated recently, whether a member of a commune has the right to enter another member's room, either a man's or a woman's, at any time … well, and it was decided that he does…"

"Well, and what if he or she is occupied at the moment with vital necessities, heh, heh!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment