Sofia D > Sofia's Quotes

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“manuscripts don't burn" - "(рукописи не горят)”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“And what's strange, what would be marvelous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if
evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows
disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the
shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and living beings.
Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because
of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You're stupid.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“A beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“I do not rebel against my God, I simply do not accept his world.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burden in silence. Without this silence, happiness would be impossible.”
― Anton Chekhov

“If there's no God, all is permitted.”
― Dostoevsky Fyodor

“You are going to perform a virtuous deed, but you don't even believe in virtue--that's what makes you angry and torments you, that's why you're so vindictive.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Even in Siberia there is happiness.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Being at a loss to resolve these questions, I am resolved to leave them without any resolution.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Do you know that centuries will pass and mankind will proclaim with the mouth of its wisdom and science that there is no crime, and therefore no sin, but only hungry men? Feed them first, then ask virtue of them.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“I punish myself for my whole life, my whole life I punish.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“The Master created humans first as the lowest type, most easily formed. Gradually, he replaced them by robots, the next higher step, and finally he created me, to take the place of the last humans.”
― Isaac Asimov, I, Robot

“There is no God and we are his prophets.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“You pass by a little child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You don’t know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“A picnic. Picture a forest, a country road, a meadow. Cars drive off the country road into the meadow, a group of young people get out carrying bottles, baskets of food, transistor radios, and cameras. They light fires, pitch tents, turn on the music. In the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that watched in horror through the long night creep out from their hiding places. And what do they see? Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around... Rags, burnt-out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind... And of course, the usual mess—apple cores, candy wrappers, charred remains of the campfire, cans, bottles, somebody’s handkerchief, somebody’s penknife, torn newspapers, coins, faded flowers picked in another meadow.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“Empathy, evidently, existed only within the human community, whereas intelligence to some degree could be found throughout every phylum and order including the arachnida.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“Xenology is an unnatural mixture of science fiction and formal logic. At its core is a flawed assumption—that an alien race would be psychologically human.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
You forget some things, dont you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“It is different with the upper classes. They, following science, want to base justice on reason alone, but not with Christ, as before, and they have already proclaimed that there is no crime, that there is no sin. And that's consistent, for if you have no God what is the meaning of crime?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“You're not Dostoevsky,' said the citizeness, who was getting muddled by Koroviev. Well, who knows, who knows,' he replied.
'Dostoevsky's dead,' said the citizeness, but somehow not very confidently.
'I protest!' Behemoth exclaimed hotly. 'Dostoevsky is immortal!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal—there's the trick!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita