Best 9 quotes of Lyubov Dostoyevskaya on MyQuotes

And yet if anything in the world can save you, it is not a convent and not Catholicism, but simply an active interest in your fellow-creatures. When experience and observation have taught us love and charity, we are saved, and life is no longer terrible. Fate may be as cruel as she pleases ; but if we have warmth and love in our hearts, we shall never be alone, never in despair, and shall never think of self-destruction, if only out of pity for all our suffering brothers, whom, as long as we live, we have always the chance of helping.

Books took, in her young life, the place of companions and childish games. She read a great deal without guidance or discrimination, and gained all her ideas on life, all her faith, all her ideals and aims and aspirations from books. Books stood between her and reality, and hid from her those deep truths that can never be learnt from even the greatest literary production, but can only be understood after long years of untiring observation and experience. It was in books also that Irene found her ideal of the man she could love. Her hero was an exceedingly complicated character.

But the child grows up, and reaches adolescence. He stands on the threshold of life, and the school-bench is left behind him. School has taught him but little—a few facts and some elementary information. But he has learnt to reason logically, and to examine the solid foundations on which the world rests. He begins to apply his logic to everything, and when he approaches religion, doubt trembles in his soul. The absurd improbability of the legends of the Middle Ages disgusts him, and at the same time he is obsessed by the fear of remaining without a relegion, a fear which has been inculcated into his mind by his entire upbringing. Calm and cold-blooded people think it all out, and become confirmed Atheists. Not so, however, those others with fervent, burning souls!

He announced to me that as soon as ever he grows up, he will get married, just because he wants to have little children, whom he likes. ‘There is only one trouble,’ he added, very seriously, ‘I shall have to live all the time with my wife; there is no escape.

Italians can drink hot chocolate and eat ices almost at the same time, without dying!

No one can sing well, play well, or write well, without living through moments of the deepest pain and anguish. Every real talent has known times of torturing depression when the heart in its agony has cried out to God: “Why hast Thou forsaken me? What have I done that I should suffer so?" And then, at the very darkest moment, suddenly, the veil is torn from their eyes! Truth, with her flaming torch, stands before them, and they understand that God sends them suffering to strengthen and ennoble their talent, that it may touch men's hearts and show to tired wanderers on earth glimpses of heaven.

People in books were always so charming, and all their thoughts and actions so comprehensible. They all invariably had a clear, well-defined object in life, and strove through a few hundred engrossing pages to attain this object. They were all noble and generous, and their lives were bright and beautiful. What interesting and delightful moments Irene had passed in their society! They had made her laugh and cry and suffer and rejoice, and had entertained her with the brilliancy of their wit. How dull and colourless real people had appeared beside these heroes and heroines of fiction.

We know how to dream beautifully! And in our dreams we are always extraordinarily active! We cross oceans, found colonies, introduce ideal governments, and die as Kings or at least Presidents of Republics! In actual life, however, we groan, we are miserable, and we greatly resent being obliged to bother about going to the Bank, in order to receive the interest of the capital acquired for us by our more energetic ancestors.

Why are you all quarrelling about whether certain miracles were or were not performed nineteen centuries ago in Palestine? Why must you be certain of those particular miracles, before you can believe in God? To-day, at this very moment, you are surrounded by miracles. Birth, death, sunrise, springtime, winter—are not all these miracles? You have forgotten them because you see them every day. In your silly self-conceit, you assure yourselves that all this is perfectly natural, and that science has long ago explained it all—but you forget that your science has only noted the existence of these miracles, and that their secret belongs as much as ever to the Almighty Ruler of the Universe in whom you find it so difficult to believe.