Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery. If there is a hundredth of a fraction of a false note to candor, it immediately produces dissonance, and as a result, exposure. But in flattery, even if everything is false down to the last note, it is still pleasant, and people will listen not without pleasure; with coarse pleasure, perhaps, but pleasure nevertheless.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Candor is far more challenging than flattery, which is often easier and more enjoyable to accept.
In this quote, Dostoevsky reflects on the intrinsic difficulties of honesty and the allure of flattery. He suggests that while true candor demands authenticity and can lead to discomfort or exposure when even slightly off-key, flattery, regardless of its insincerity, is readily accepted and enjoyed by people, revealing a preference for comfort over truth in human interactions.
Themes
CandorFlatteryHonestyTruthHuman Nature
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about the importance of honesty in leadership.
More from Fyodor Dostoevsky
All quotes →What if, when this fog scatters and flies upward, the whole rotten, slimey city goes with it, rises with the fog and vanishes like smoke.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
But do you understand, I cry to him, do you understand that if you have the guillotine in the forefront, and with such glee, it's for the sole reason that cutting heads off is the easiest thing, and having an idea is difficult!
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
...to return to their 'native soil,' as they say, to the bosom, so to speak, of their mother earth, like frightened children, yearning to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their decrepit mother, and to sleep there for ever, only to escape the horrors that terrify them.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Similar quotes
You can put anything into words, except your own life.
Max FrischRead
I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air -- or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.
Arthur Conan DoyleRead
The Few assume to be the deputies, but they are often only the despoilers of the Many.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelRead
Nor shall this peace sleep with her; but as when The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix, Her ashes new-create another heir As great in admiration as herself.
William ShakespeareRead
I'm opposed to a lot of the time that we as a civilization have come to spend looking at screens. For my money, life is much delicious damn near everyplace but inside that screen.
Nick OffermanRead
There is no such thing as a happy ending. I never met a single one to equal "Once upon a time.
Stephen KingRead