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
Oh I've plenty of time, my time is entirely my own.
Interpretation
The quote reflects an understanding of personal autonomy over one's time, suggesting that the speaker feels in control of their own life.
In this quote, Dostoevsky emphasizes the importance of individual agency and the value of time as a personal asset. It suggests that with sufficient freedom and self-determination, one can shape their own existence and decisions without external pressures or constraints.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about personal growth and taking control of one's life.
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.
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.
Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled.
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.
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!
...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.
People were excited by violence. What, after all, was the sexual act but a voluntarily endured assault, a momentary death?
To say! To know how to say! To know how to exist via the written voice and the intellectual image! This is all that matters in life; the rest is men and women, imagined loves and factitious vanities, the wiles of our digestion and forgetfulness, people squirming β like worms when a rock is lifted β under the huge abstract boulder of the meaningless blue sky.
The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.
The idea of a superior or inferior race is a myth that has been completely refuted by anthropological evidence.
You can't live in this world but there's nowhere else to go.
Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.
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