Natasha Wolf > Natasha's Quotes

“Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“What she did not know, and would never have believed, was that though her soul seemed to have been grown over with an impenetrable layer of mould, some delicate blades of grass, young and tender, were already pushing their way upwards, destined to take root and send out living shoots so effectively that her all-consuming grief would soon be lost and forgotten. The wound was healing from inside.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“At moments of departure and a change of life, people capable of reflecting on their actions usually get into a serious state of mind. At these moments they usually take stock of the past and make plans for the future.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy. It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness and despair, showing the possibility of consolation.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“She understood the world and her place in it. She understood nothing. The world and her place in it were nothing and she understood that.”
― Joseph Fink, Welcome to Night Vale

“Fear is a reasonable response to life.”
― Joseph Fink, Welcome to Night Vale

“What can an eternity of damnation matter to someone who has felt, if only for a second, the infinity of delight?”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen

“Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.”
― Charles Baudelaire, My Heart Laid Bare

“We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose. ”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Unable to suppress love, the Church wanted at least to disinfect it, and it created marriage.”
― Charles Beaudelaire

“the Devil's hand directs our every move - / the things we loathed become the things we love”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

“But what does it matter what reality is outside myself, so long as it has helped me to live, to feel that I am, and what I am?”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

“How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering.”
― Charles Baudelaire, La Fanfarlo

“Each day we take another step to hell,
Descending through the stench, unhorrified”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Wandering aimlessly, broken by my thoughts,
Which slowly sharpened daggers at my heart”
― Charles Baudelaire

“The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen

“How difficult it is to understand each other, my dear angel, and how much thought is incommunicable, even between people who love each other!”
― Charles Baudelaire

“God is the only being who, in order to reign, need not even exist.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“You can be sincere and still be stupid.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“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

“Besides, nowadays, almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

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

“Yet, I didn't understand that she was intentionally disguising her feelings with sarcasm; that was usually the last resort of people who are timid and chaste of heart, whose souls have been coarsely and impudently invaded; and who, until the last moment, refuse to yield out of pride and are afraid to express their own feelings to you.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead