At first, art imitates life. Then life will imitate art.Then life will find its very existence from the arts.
Fyodor DostoevskyI have been tortured with longing to believe ... and the yearning grows stronger the more cogent the intellectual difficulties stand in the way.
Fyodor DostoevskyI know that you don't believe it, but indeed, life will bring you through. You will live it down in time. What you need now is fresh air, fresh air, fresh air!
Fyodor DostoevskyI am a ridiculous man. They call me a madman now. That would be a distinct rise in my social position were it not that they still regard me as being as ridiculous as ever.
Fyodor DostoevskyAnd now I am eking out my days in my corner, taunting myself with the bitter and entirely useless consolations that an intelligent man cannot seriously become anything; that only a fool can become something. Yes, sir, an intelligent nineteenth-century man must be, is morally bound to be, an essentially characterless creature; and a man of character, a man of action - an essentially limited creature. This is my conviction at the age of forty. I am forty now, and forty years - why, it is all of a lifetime, it is the deepest of old age. Living past forty is indecent, vulgar, immoral!
Fyodor Dostoevsky