Dostoyevsky. Detail of the portrait of Vasily Perov.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky it is considered not only one of the best russian writers that existed, but one of the best of all time. He died on a day like today in 1881 in Saint Petersburg. His work tackled the social and political realities of the Tsarist Russia more complicated. In fact, he was sentenced to death in 1849 as a revolutionary and, shortly before his execution, Tsar Nicholas I commuted his sentence to several years of forced labor. Waiting for death for days deeply marked him and influenced his writing career.
The Karamazov brothers, The idiot, Crime and Punishment o The player are referents of the most fundamental literature of the nineteenth century for being examples of the deep knowledge of Dostoevsky of human psychology. In them he created characters that reflected the brightest and also the darkest of the soul. These are some phrases chosen from those titles to remember you on this date.
Crime and Punishment
- You only live once, and I don't want to expect that universal happiness. Above all, I want to live. If he did not feel this desire, it would be better not to have life.
- Reason is the slave of passion.
- In our day, money is the sweetest of honeys.
- Everything that is useful to humanity is noble.
- Poverty is not a vice.
The idiot
- Compassion is the main and perhaps the only law of human existence.
- Experience is decisive and shows that you cannot live taking advantage of every moment. It is impossible.
- What is most vile and despicable about money is that it even provides talents.
- If he didn't die. If they gave me back my life. What eternity would open before me! It would transform every minute into a century of life; I would not despise a single moment and keep track of all the minutes so as not to waste them.
The Karamazov brothers
- May the devil take away all these men with a face shaped by the centuries and who only carry within them charlatanism and falsehood!
- Whoever lies to himself and listens to his own lies comes to not distinguish any truth, neither in him, nor around him.
- Man invented God. But that is not what is strange, nor is it prodigious that God really existed; The strange thing is that such an idea could have arisen in the brain of an animal as fierce and evil as man, since it is such a sacred idea, so moving, so deeply wise and that honors man so much.
- My opinion is that if the devil does not exist, if he has been created by man, he has done so in his image and likeness.
- There are three forces, three unique forces on earth capable of conquering and captivating the consciousness of these weak rebels forever, for their happiness. They are: the miracle, the mystery and the authority.
The player
- Frankly, I do not see anything dirty in the desire to win as much as possible and as soon as possible.
- As ridiculous as my great confidence in the benefits of roulette may seem, even more ridiculous is the current opinion that it is absurd and stupid to expect anything from the game. And why should gambling be worse than any other means of making money, for example, trade? One thing is certain: that one out of every hundred wins. But what does that matter to me?
- At that moment I should have retired, but a strange feeling came over me: a desire to provoke Fate, to play a joke, to stick out my tongue. I risked the largest authorized amount, four thousand florins, and lost… Then, stunned, I left the table.
- I have not known for a long time what is happening in the world, in Russia or here ... You know very well what my mind absorbs. Since I have not the slightest hope and in your eyes I am a nullity, I will tell you frankly: I only see you. And I don't care about the rest. I myself don't know why I love her like this.