42 Quotes by Lev Shestov

Нужно, чтобы сомнение стало постоянной творческой силой, пропитало бы собой самое существо нашей жизни. Ибо твердое знание есть условие несовершенного восприятия.

But strange though it may seem, the more he judged, and the more he realized that men feared and acknowledged his right to judge, the more his innermost soul questioned man's right to judgment of any kind.

But nobody has ever yet called a philosopher "a hired conscience," though everybody gives the lawyer this nickname. Why this partiality?

Count Tolstoy preached inaction. It seems he had no need. We "inact" remarkably. Idleness, just that idleness Tolstoy dreamed of, a free, conscious idling that despises labour, this is one of the chief characteristics of our time.

If he tells the truth, it is because the most reeking lie no longer intoxicates him, even though he swallow it not in the modest doses that idealism offers, but in immoderate quantities, thousand-gallon-barrel gulps. He would taste the bitterness, but it would not make his head turn, as it does Schiller's, or Dostoevsky's, or even Socrates’, whose head, as we know, could stand any quantity of wine, but went spinning with the most commonplace lie.

He did not want to be original; he made superhuman efforts to be like everybody else: but there is no escaping one's destiny.

It is obvious that he has set himself an impossible task; slow and gradual transformations are possible, they even happen quite frequently, but they do not lead us to a new life; they only take us from one old life to another old life. The new life always makes itself known abruptly, without any approach or preparation, and it keeps its strange enigmatical character in the midst of events whose course has been determined by the old laws.

Dostoevsky does not believe his own words, and he is trying to replace a lack of faith with "feeling" and eloquence.

Не знаю", ответил старый профессор рыдающей Кате. Не знаю, - отвечал Чехов всем рыдающим и замученным людям. Этими - и только этими словами можно закончить статью о Чехове. Résigne-toi, mon cœur, dors ton sommeil de brute.