Friday, July 6, 2012

strange dreams. [be daring].

“In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular activity, vividness and extraordinary semblance of reality. At times monstrous images are created, but the setting and the whole picture are so truth like and filled with details so delicate, so unexpected, but so artistically consistent, that the dreamer, were he an artist like Pushkin or Turgenev even, could never have invented them in the waking state. Such sick dreams always remain long in the memory and make a powerful impression on the overwrought and deranged nervous system.”
       -Part I, Chapter V, p. 57

“And I kept thinking…And I had dreams all the time, strange dreams of all sorts, no need to describe! Only then I began to fancy that….No, that’s not it! Again I am telling you wrong! You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid, that if others are stupid--and I know they are--yet I won’t be wiser? Then I saw, Sonia, that if one waits for everyone to get wiser it will take too long….Afterwards I understood that that would never come to pass, that men won’t change and that nobody can alter it and that it’s not worth wasting effort over it. Yes, that’s so. That’s the law of their nature, Sonia…that’s so!…And I know now, Sonia, that whoever is strong in mind and spirit will have power over them. Anyone who is greatly daring is right in their eyes. He who despises most things will be a law-giver among them and he who dares most of all will be most in the right! So it has been till now and so it will always be. A man must be blind not to see it!”
       -Part IV, Chapter III, p. 413

“‘…But what I say is, that if you convince a person logically that he has nothing to cry about, he’ll stop crying. That’s clear. Is it your conviction that he won’t?’
      ‘Life would be too easy if it were so,’ answered Raskolnikov.”
       -Part IV, Chapter IV, p. 419

Fyodor Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment.


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