Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes

If I showed you what was in my heart," she said, "it would burn you to a cinder. "I've tried to burn you similarly," it said, "but you never even noticed when I opened my chest.

These things he said in words. But much in his heart remained unsaid. For he himself could not speak his deeper secret.

Fearful of sentimentality, I disown my tears and melting heart.

There is no passion that steals into the heart more imperceptibly and covers itself under more disguises than pride.

Deep in my heart I'm concealing things that I'm longing to say. Scared to confess what I'm feeling - frightened you'll slip away.

I did not understand that she was hiding her feelings under irony, that this is usually the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded, and that their pride makes them refuse to surrender till the last moment and shrink from giving expression to their feelings before you. to have guessed the truth from the timidity with which she had repeatedly approached her sarcasm, only bringing herself to utter it at last with an effort.

He had tenderness in his heart — ‘a soft place,’ as Nicholas Higgins called it; but he had some pride in concealing it; he kept it very sacred and safe, and was jealous of every circumstance that tried to gain admission. But if he dreaded exposure of his tenderness, he was equally desirous that all men should recognize his justice; and he felt that he had been unjust, in giving so scornful a hearing to anyone who had waited, with humble patience, for five hours, to speak to him.

He gave her his heart. She took it and placed it quietly in the pocket of her gown. No one observed what she did.

He had discovered that the choice between self-love or love of something other than self offers no escape from suffering either way, it is merely a choice between two woundings, of the pride or of the heart.

Somewhere, far down, there was an itch in his heart, but he made it a point not to scratch it. He was afraid of what might come leaking out.

Just because I don't wear my heart on my sleeve - " "You don't even wear your heart in your chest.

When an intelligent man reaches the point of inviting self-explanation and offers surrendering the key to his heart, he is assuredly riding a drunken horse.

On one level, I am a total softie, sort of depressed and afraid of losing the people I love or failing them. To disguise that, there's all this harsh, poop-centric, external swagger, full of nastiness. I'm a cloaking device.

The causes that govern the heart appear to be wholly alien to the results achieved. Are the forces that moved a desperate criminal the same that fill a martyr with pride, as both mount the scaffold?

The reason we do not let our friends see the very bottom of our hearts is not so much distrust of them as distrust of ourselves.

Poets and novelists and playwrights make themselves, against terrible resistances, give over what the rest of us keep safely locked within our hearts.

Don't lie to me! Don't seem so normal when I know you have cut yourself off from me in your heart! If you can put on our affectionate closeness like a mask, then I'll never be able to take joy in it again.

How was it that he haunted her imagination so persistently? What could it be? Why did she care for what he thought, in spite of all her pride in spite of herself? She believed that she could have borne the sense of Almighty displeasure, because He knew all, and could read her penitence, and hear her cries for help in time to come. But Mr.Thornton-why did she tremble, and hide her face in the pillow? What strong feeling had overtaking her at last?

For all his sourness, he was ruled by his heart.

Nature, in giving tears to man, confessed that he Had a tender heart; this is our noblest quality.

I'm afraid if I listen to my heart once, I'll never figure out how to ignore it again.

At heart a truly modest man, he had nevertheless the modest man's pride in his modesty in the face of achievement.

The truth thy speech doth show, within my heart reproves the swelling pride.

I was deeply unhappy, but I didn't know it because I was so happy all the time.

I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.