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 DostoevskyRead
Can a man of perception respect himself at all?
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote questions the self-respect of those who possess deep perception and insight.
Fyodor Dostoevsky poses a profound question about the nature of self-respect in relation to perception. It suggests that a man with keen awareness and sensitivity to the world may struggle with self-acceptance due to the weight of his insights, challenges, or the moral complexities he understands. This interplay between perception and self-respect invites contemplation on the burdens carried by those who see beyond superficiality.
Themes
PerceptionSelf-RespectInsightPhilosophyExistenceAwareness
In practice
Example use cases
During a seminar on self-awareness, one might use this quote to challenge participants to reflect on their own perceptions and self-regard.
More from Fyodor Dostoevsky
All quotes →What if, when this fog scatters and flies upward, the whole rotten, slimey city goes with it, rises with the fog and vanishes like smoke.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
But do you understand, I cry to him, do you understand that if you have the guillotine in the forefront, and with such glee, it's for the sole reason that cutting heads off is the easiest thing, and having an idea is difficult!
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
...to return to their 'native soil,' as they say, to the bosom, so to speak, of their mother earth, like frightened children, yearning to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their decrepit mother, and to sleep there for ever, only to escape the horrors that terrify them.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Similar quotes
We must make our choice between economy and liberty or confusion and servitude...If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labor and in our amusements...if we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.
Thomas JeffersonRead
The flip side of suicide is that it leaves a lingering question in the minds of the people who survived. It's like a cancer that's metastasized. The suicide is the cancer and the metastasis is all these people saying, Why? Why? Why?
Abraham VergheseRead
He [Stephen Douglas] is blowing out the moral lights around us, when he contends that whoever wants slaves has a right to hold them; that he is penetrating, so far as lies in his power, the human soul, and eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty, when he is in every possible way preparing the public mind, by his vast influence, for making the institution of slavery perpetual and national.
Abraham LincolnRead
I can speak to my soul only when the two of us are off exploring deserts or cities or mountains or roads.
Paulo CoelhoRead
The more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him.
Guy DebordRead
A man must ride alternately on the horses of his private and his public nature.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead