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The Gambler QUOTES

The Gambler QUOTES

1 " People really do like seeing their best friends humiliated; a large part of the friendship is based on humiliation; and that is an old truth,well known to all intelligent people. "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Gambler

2 " Sometimes it happens that the most insane thought, the most impossible conception, will become so fixed in one's head that at length one believes the thought or the conception to be reality. Moreover, if with the thought or the conception there is combined a strong, a passionate, desire, one will come to look upon the said thought or conception as something fated, inevitable, and foreordained—something bound to happen. Whether by this there is connoted something in the nature of a combination of presentiments, or a great effort of will, or a self-annulment of one's true expectations, and so on, I do not know; "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Gambler

3 " I believe he was feeling a bit nervous. Possibly it was my costume that took him aback. I was dressed quite well, even elegantly, and looked as if I belonged to the best society. "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Gambler

4 " Or perhaps it is because it is so NECESSARY for you to win. It is like a drowning man catching at a straw. You yourself will agree that, unless he were drowning he would not mistake a straw for the trunk of a tree. "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Gambler

5 " I wanted to fathom her secrets; I wanted her to come to me and say: "I love you," and if not that, if that was senseless insanity, then...well, what was there to care about? Did I know what I wanted? I was like one demented: all I wanted was to be near her, in the halo of her glory, in her radiance, always, for ever, all my life. I knew nothing more! "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Gambler

6 " Nothing could be more absurd than moral lessons at such a moment! Oh, self-satisfied people: with what proud self-satisfaction such babblers are ready to utter their pronouncements! If they only knew to what degree I myself understand all the loathsomeness of my present condition, they wouldn't have the heart to teach me. "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Gambler

7 " Russians alone are able to combine so many opposites in themselves at one and the same time. "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Gambler

8 " if she had ordered me to throw myself down then, I would have done it! If she had said it only as a joke, said it with contempt, spitting on me--even then I would have jumped! "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Gambler

9 " It's curious and ridiculous how much the gaze of a prudish and painfully chaste man touched by love can sometimes express and that precisely at a moment when the man would of course sooner be glad to fall through the earth than to express anything with a word or a look. "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Gambler

10 " Can I possibly not understand myself that I'm a lost man? But--why can't I resurrect? Yes! it only takes being calculating and patient at least once in your life and--that's all! It only takes being steadfast at least once, and in an hour I can change my whole destiny! "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Gambler

11 " No, it was not the money that I valued—what I wanted was to make all this mob of Heintzes, hotel proprietors, and fine ladies of Baden talk about me, recount my story, wonder at me, extol my doings, and worship my winnings. "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Gambler

12 " I had come there not only to look at, but also to number myself sincerely and wholeheartedly with, the mob. As for my secret moral views, I had no room for them amongst my actual, practical opinions. "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Gambler

13 " نعم ، رب خاطر هو أقرب الخواطر إلى الجنون ، وأدناها إلى الاستحالة ، يبلغ من قوة رسوخه في الغكر أن المرء يخاله ممكن التحقيق ، حتى إذا كان هذا الخاطر مرتبطا برغبة قوية ملتهبة جامحة أعتقد المرء أخيرا أنه أمرا حتمي ، ضروري ، فرضه القدر منذ الأزل ، أمر لا يمكن إلا أن يكون ، ولا يمكن إلا أن يحدث! وبما كان ههنا شئ أكثر من ذلك: ربما كان ههنا مزيج من نبوءات يحسها المرء ، ومن جهد خارق تبذله الإرادة ، ومن خيال سمم المرء به نفسه بنفسه ، ومن أشياء أخرى أيضا ... لست أدري ... "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Gambler

14 " most men love to see their best friend in abasement; for generally it is on such abasement that friendship is founded. "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Gambler

15 " If the spirit has passed through a great many sensations, possibly it can no longer be sated with them, but grows more excited, and demands more sensations, and stronger and stronger ones, until at length it falls exhausted. "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Gambler

16 " هل تعلمين أنني سأقتلك في ذات يوم؟ لا غيرة ولا لأنني أكون قد انتهيت من حبك! لا، وإنما سأقتلك لمجرد أنني أشعر في بعض الأيام برغبة في أن ألتهمك. وإذا قتلتك فسيكون عليّ أن أقتل نفسي أيضا. ولكنني سأؤجل قتل نفسي ما استطعت إلى التأجيل سبيلا، حتى أشعر من فراقك بذلك العذاب الذي لا يطاق! "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Gambler

17 " Well, yes, yes, to be enslaved to you is a pleasure. There is, there is pleasure in the ultimate degree of humiliation and insignificance!" I went on raving. "Devil knows, maybe there is in the knout, too, when the knout comes down on your back and tears your flesh to pieces...But maybe I want to try other pleasures as well. "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Gambler

18 " You have disgraced the name of Russia, madam!" shouted the general, "and there are police for that! "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Gambler

19 " it's as if I'm afraid to spoil the charm of what has only just passed by a serious book or some serious occupation. As if this ugly dream and all the impressions it left behind are so dear to me that I'm even afraid to touch it with something new, lest it vanish in smoke! "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Gambler

20 " Yes; even if a gentleman should lose his whole substance, he must never give way to annoyance. Money must be so subservient to gentility as never to be worth a thought. Of course, the SUPREMELY aristocratic thing is to be entirely oblivious of the mire of rabble, with its setting; but sometimes a reverse course may be aristocratic to remark, to scan, and even to gape at, the mob (for preference, through a lorgnette), even as though one were taking the crowd and its squalor for a sort of raree show which had been organised specially for a gentleman's diversion. "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Gambler