Quotes from The Double

“These, gentlemen, are my rules: if I don't succeed, I keep trying; if I do succeed, I keep quiet; and in any case I don't undermine anyone. I'm not an intriguer, and I'm proud of it. I wouldn't make a good diplomat. They also say, gentlemen, that the bird flies to the fowler. That's true, and I'm ready to agree: but who is the fowler here, and who is the bird? That's still a question, gentlemen!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Double

“I mean to say, Krestyan Ivanovich, that I go my own way, a particular way. I'm my own particular man and, as it seems to me, I don't depend on anybody. I also go for walks, Krestyan Ivanovich.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Double

“ما من انسان يستحق أن يلتفت إليه.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Double

“Sorrow is concealed in gilded palaces, and there’s no escaping it.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Double

“A man's perishing here, a man's vanishing from his own sight here, and can't control himself--what sort of wedding can there be!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Double

“The door from the next room suddenly opened with a timid, quiet creak, as if thus announcing the entrance of a very insignificant person...”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Double

“إن هذه المخلوقات التي لا تملك قوة الدفاع عن نفسها متشابهة متماثلة: تعرف أن الهوة تنتظرها هناك، ثم تجري إليها لا تلوي على شيء.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Double

“He could not consent to allow himself to be insulted, still less to allow himself to be treated as a rag, and, above all, to allow a thoroughly vicious man to treat him so. No quarrelling, however, no quarrelling! Possibly if some one wanted, if some one, for instance, actually insisted on turning Mr. Golyadkin into a rag, he might have done so, might have done so without opposition or punishment (Mr. Golyadkin was himself conscious of this at times), and he would have been a rag and not Golyadkin - yes, a nasty, filthy rag; but that rag would not have been a simple rag, it would have been a rag possessed of dignity, it would have been a rag possessed of feelings and sentiments, even though dignity was defenceless and feelings could not assert themselves, and lay hidden deep down in the filthy folds of the rag, still the feelings there...”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Double

“The cabby left, muttering under his nose. "What's he muttering about?" Mr. Goliadkin thought through his tears. "I hired him for the evening, I'm sort of...within my rights nows...so there! I hired him for the evening, and that's the end of the matter. Even if he just stands there, it's all the same. It's as I will. I'm free to go, and free not to go. And that I'm now standing behind the woodpile--that, too, is quite all right...and don't you dare say anything; I say, the gentleman wants to stand behind the woodpile, so he stands behind the woodpile...and it's no taint to anybody's honor--so there! So there, lady mine, if you'd like to know. Thus and so, I say, but in our age, lady mine, nobody lives in a hut. So there! In our industrial age, lady mine, you can't get anywhere without good behavior, of which you yourself serve as a pernicious example...You say one must serve as a chief clerk and live in a hut on the seashore. First of all, lady mine, there are no chief clerks on the seashore, and second, you and I can't possible get to be a chief clerk. For, to take an example, suppose I apply, I show up--thus and so, as a chief clerk, say, sort of...and protect me from my enemy...and they'll tell you, my lady, say, sort of...there are lots of chief clerks, and here you're not at some émigrée Falbala's, where you learned good behavior, of which you yourself serve as a pernicious example. Good behavior, my lady, means sitting at home, respecting your father, and not thinking of any little suitors before it's time. Little suitors, my lady, will be found in due time! So there! Of course, one must indisputably have certain talents, to wit: playing the piano on occasion, speaking French, some history, geography, catechism, and arithmetic--so there!--but not more. Also cooking; cooking should unfailingly be part of every well-behaved girl's knowledge!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Double

“Bow or not? Call back or not? Recognize him or not?" our hero wondered in indescribable anguish, "or pretend that I am not myself, but somebody else strikingly like me, and look as though nothing were the matter. Simply not I, not I—and that's all," said Mr. Golyadkin, taking off his hat to Andrey Filippovitch and keeping his eyes fixed upon him. "I'm . . . I'm all right," he whispered with an effort; "I'm . . . quite all right. It's not I, it's not I—and that is the fact of the matter.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Double

“Beside himself with shame and despair, the utterly ruined though perfectly just Mr. Golyadkin dashed headlong away, wherever fate might lead him; but with every step he took, with every thud of his foot on the granite of the pavement, there leapt up as though out of the earth a Mr. Golyadkin precisely the same, perfectly alike, and of a revolting depravity of heart. And all these precisely similar Golyadkins set to running after one another as soon as they appeared, and stretched in a long chain like a file of geese, hobbling after the real Mr. Golyadkin, so there was nowhere to escape from these duplicates — so that Mr. Golyadkin, who was in every way deserving of compassion, was breathless with terror; so that at last a terrible multitude of duplicates had sprung into being; so that the whole town was obstructed at last by duplicate Golyadkins, and the police officer, seeing such a breach of decorum, was obliged to seize all these duplicates by the collar and to put them into the watch-house, which happened to be beside him . . . Numb and chill with horror, our hero woke up, and numb and chill with horror felt that his waking state was hardly more cheerful . . . It was oppressive and harrowing . . . He was overcome by such anguish that it seemed as though some one were gnawing at his heart.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Double

“...örneğin ben maskeyi sadece karnavalda, neşeli toplantılarda, yani gerektiği zaman kullanırım, bazı insanlar gibi, tabiri caizse, her gün yüzümde maskeyle dolaşmam.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Double

“Gazda şi musafirul goliră cîte un pahar, apoi încă unul. Musafirul devenea tot mai simpatic şi, la rîndul său, dădu repetate dovezi de sinceritate şi exuberanţă, participînd viu la mulţumirea sufletească a domnului Goliadkin şi bucurîndu-se de bucuria lui, văzînd în el pe adevăratul şi singurul său binefăcător. Luînd un condei şi o foaie de hîrtie, îl rugă pe domnul Goliadkin să nu se uite la ceea ce scrie şi, după ce isprăvi, îi întinse gazdei sale hîrtia. Era un catren sentimental, scris, de altfel, într-un stil emfatic, caligrafiat admirabil, compus, probabil, chiar de simpaticul musafir. Stihurile sunau astfel:
Chiar dacă tu mă vei uita,
Eu nu te voi uita pe tine;
Nicicînd, orice s-ar întîmpla,
Nu mă uita nici tu pe mine!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Double

“Pero supongamos que todo se arregla de algún modo. Supongamos que el dinerillo que tengo me basta para empezar. Necesitaré otra vivienda, algunos muebles por malos que sean... También para empezar, no podré contar con Petrushka. Me las arreglaré bien sin ese truhán..., me ayudará la gente de la casa... Pongamos que todo eso está bien. ¿Pero por qué no pienso nunca en lo que debo pensar, sino en otra cosa?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Double

“Aliás, não podemos deixar passar em claro o seguinte: provavelmente, se alguém quisesse, se alguém quisesse muito transformar o senhor Goliádkin num trapo, transformá-lo-ia sem problema, sem resistência e impunemente (o que o próprio senhor Goliádkin às vezes sentias), e ele ficaria um trapo e não o Goliádkin - um trapo ignóbil, imundo; não um simples trapo, mas um trapo com dignidade, um trapo com espírito e sentidos, nem que fosse uma dignidade submissa e uns sentimentos submissos, escondidos profundamente nas rugas sujas do trapo, mas, mesmo assim, sentimentos..." (p. 79)”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Double

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Popular quotes

“What is it we are questing for? It is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. There is nothing you can do that's more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal, transparent to transcendence; in this way you will find, live, become a realization of your own personal myth.”
― Joseph Campbell, quote from Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

“SCARBOROUGH FAIR, or, THE LOVER'S PROMISE

(Lucy:)
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
Always he'll be a true love of mine

Tell him I've made him a magical shirt
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Without any seam or needlework
Always he'll be a true love of mine

(Zach:)
Tell her she's found me an acre of land
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Between the salt water and the sea strand
That makes her a true love of mine

Tell her she's plowed it with just a goat's horn
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
She's sowed it all over with one grain of corn
Yes, she is a true love of mine
And her daughter forever a daughter of mine

(Together:)
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Remember us to all who live there
Ours will be true love for all time”
― Nancy Werlin, quote from Impossible

“...where's the skill in being a hero if you were always destined to do it?”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun

“As the virtual world of electronic communication becomes the world many of us inhabit all the time, in turning to imaginative literature we may not be seeking mere reassurance nor be impelled by mere nostalgia. To enter with heart and mind into the world of the imagination may be to head deliberately and directly toward, or back toward, engagement with the real world. In one of T. S. Eliot’s poems a bird sings, “Mankind cannot bear very much reality.” I’ve always thought that bird was mistaken, or was talking only about some people. I find it amazing how much of the real world most of us can endure. Not only endure, but need, desire, crave. Reality is life. Where we suffocate is in the half-life of unreality, untruth, imitation, fakery, the almost-true that is not true. To be human is to live both within and beyond the narrow band of what-happens-now, in the vast regions of the past and the possible, the known and the imagined: our real world, our true Now.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from Tales from Earthsea

“Any action a woman engages in from a spirit of joy, and within a similarly safe and joyous environment, falls within the city-walls of feminism. A girl has a right to dance how she wants, when her favourite record comes on.”
― Caitlin Moran, quote from How to Be a Woman

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About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.