Demons

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Alternate Cover Edition ISBN 06797345110679734511. (ISBN13: 9780679734512)

Inspired by the true story of a political murder that horrified Russians in 1869, Fyodor Dostoevsky conceived of Demons as a "novel-pamphlet" in which he would say everything about the plague of materialist ideology that he saw infecting his native land. What emerged was a prophetic and ferociously funny masterpiece of ideology and murder in pre-revolutionary Russia.

BUY NOW

Paperback, 733 pages

Published August 1st 1995 by Vintage (first published 1872)

tags: novels, cultural, politics, classics, literature, classic literature, 19th century, philosophy, russia, russian literature, fiction

Book Quotes

“I ask, I demand to be respected! Shatov went on shouting. "Not for my person--to hell with it--but for something else, just for now, for a few words...We are two beings, and we have come together in infinity...for the last time in the world. Abandon your tone and take a human one! At least for once in your life speak in a human voice. Not for my sake, but for your own. Do you understand that you should forgive me that slap in the face if only because with it I gave you an opportunity to know your infinite power...Again you smile that squeamish, worldly smile. Oh, when will you understand me! Away with the young squire!”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Is it true that you insisted you knew no difference in beauty between some brutal sensual stunt and any great deed, even the sacrifice of life for mankind? Is it true that you found a coincidence in beauty, a sameness of pleasure at both poles? ...You married out of a passion for torture, out of a passion for remorse, out of moral sensuality.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“My immortality is necessary if only because God would not want to commit an injustice and utterly quench the flame of love for him once it has been kindled in my heart. And what is more precious than love? Love is higher than existence, love is the crown of being, and how is it possible that existence is not subordinate to it? If I have come to love him and have taken joy in my love, is it possible that he should extinguish both me and my joy and turn us into nothing? If God exists, then I am immortal too!”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Life is now given to man at the cost of pain and fear. Here, they are blinded by this sometimes. Now man is not yet that man. There will be another, new person, happy and proud, and for him it wouldn’t matter the death-life. He who overcomes pain and fear will become God himself. There will not be that God any longer.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

topics: Demons, Dostoevsky, 神, 人生

“Pentru mine nu exista o idee superioara aceleia ca Dumnezeu nu exista. In sprijinul meu sta istoria omenirii. Omul n-a facut altceva decat sa-si nascoceasca un Dumnezeu, pentru a putea trai fara se ucida; in aceasta consta intreaga istorie universala de pana acum.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Listen, Stavrogin: to level the mountains is a good idea, not a ridiculous one. I'm for Shigalyov! No need for education, enough of science! There's sufficient material even without science for a thousand years to come, but obedience must be set up. Only one thing is lacking in the world: obedience. The thirst for education is already an aristocratic thirst. As soon as there's just a tiny bit of family or love, there's a desire for property. We'll extinguish desire: we'll get drinking, gossip, denunciation going; we'll get unheard-of depravity going; we'll stifle every genius in infancy. Everything reduced to a common denominator, complete equality. 'We've learned a trade, and we're honest people, we don't need anything else'--that was the recent response of the English workers. Only the necessary is necessary--henceforth that is the motto of the whole globe. But there is also a need for convulsion; this will be taken care of by us, the rulers. Slaves must have rulers. Complete obedience, complete impersonality, but once every thirty years Shigalyov gets a convulsion going, and they all suddenly start devouring each other, up to a certain point, simply so as not to be bored. Boredom is an aristocratic sensation; in Shigalyovism there will be no desires. Desire and suffering are for us.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Convictions and the man--it seems they're two different things in many ways. Maybe in many ways I'm guilty before them!...We're all guilty, we're all guilty, and...if only we were all convinced of it!”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The high road is something very, very long, of which one cannot see the end - like human life, like human dreams. There is an idea in the open road, but what sort of idea is there in travelling with posting tickets? Posting tickets mean an end to ideas. Vive la grande route and then as God wills.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

topics: High Road

“But I’m still curious to know: can you move a mountain or not?’ ‘If God commands it, I will move it,’ Tikhon pronounced with quiet restraint, again beginning to lower his eyes.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Never before had she seen such writers. They were impossibly vain, but quite openly so, as if thereby fulfilling a duty. Some (though by no means all) even came drunk, but it was as if they perceived som special, just-yesterday-discovered beauty in it. They were all proud of something to the point of strangeness.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Is this what is called remorse of conscience or repentance? I do not know, and I cannot tell to this day. Perhaps this remembrance even now contains something pleasurable for my passions. No--what is unbearable to me is only this image alone, and precisely on the threshold, with its raised and threatening little fist, only that look alone, only that minute alone, only that shaking head. This is what I cannot bear, because since then it appears to me almost every day. It does not appear on its own, but I myself evoke it, and cannot help evoking it, even though I cannot live with it.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Then this God does exist according to you?" "He does not exist, but He is. In the stone there is no pain, but in the fear of the stone is the pain. God is the pain of the fear of death. He who will conquer pain and terror will become himself a god.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

topics: Death, Fear, 神, Pain, Stone, Terror

“Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. It's only that.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

topics: Life Philosophy

“And why am I lying down? You must stand 'as an example and a reproach,' she says. , what else can a man destined to be a standing 'reproach' do but lie down--doesn't she see that?”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I think,' said I, 'that God and nature are just the same thing.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The main thing is that I believe myself when I lie. The hardest thing in life is to live and not lie… and… and not to believe your own lies, yes, yes, that’s it precisely!”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“There are people on whom even clean linen looks indecent.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

topics: Bad, Evil, Indecency, Malice, People

“There is no doubt that these legendary gentlemen were capable of experiencing, even to an intense degree, the sensation of fear--otherwise they would have been much calmer, and would ot have made the sense of danger into a necessity of their nature. No, but overcoming their own cowardice--that of course, was what tempted them. A ceaseless reveling in victory and the awareness that no one can be victorious over you--that was what attracted them.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“As far as I understand it, and it’s impossible not to understand it, you yourself, at the beginning and then again, very eloquently — albeit too theoretically — have been developing a picture of a Russia covered with an endless network of knots. For their part, each of the active groups, by proselytizing and branching out ad infinitum, has the task, through systematic denunciatory propaganda of constantly undermining the authority of the local authorities, creating confusion in the villages, fostering cynicism, scandals and an utter lack of belief in anything at all, a burning desire for something better, and finally, using fires as a measure that appeals primarily to the common people, to throw the country, at a designated moment, if necessary, even into a state of despair.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“A Christian accepts responsibility whatever his environment. God has not grudged you intelligence--you are capable of answering the question, 'Am I or am I not responsible for my actions?' Therefore, there is no doubt that you are responsible. 'Temptation cannot but enter the world, but woe unto him through whom temptation cometh.' As to your transgression itself, well, many commit similar ones, but go on living in peace with their consciences and even consider such things as inevitable errors of youth. There are also odd men with the smell of the grave already about them who likewise still go on sinning, playfully shrugging off their responsibility and reassuring themselves. The world is full of such horrors. You, at least, have felt the full depth of your transgressions, and that's a very rare occurrence.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer, essayist and philosopher, perhaps most recognized today for his novels Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov.

Dostoyevsky's literary output explores human psychology in the troubled political, social and spiritual context of 19th-century Russian society. Considered by many as a founder or precursor of 20th-century existentialism, his Notes from Underground (1864), written in the embittered voice of the anonymous "underground man", was called by Walter Kaufmann the "best overture for existentialism ever written."

His tombstone reads "Verily, Verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." from John 12:24, which is also the epigraph of his final novel, The Brothers Karamazov.
... Show more

每天在收件箱中获取每日圣经经文

在手机上阅读

搜索排行

今天

7天

30天

Demons

BUY NOW

Book Quotes

Fyodor Dostoevsky

品牌集团