Lev Shestov

“Plato would hardly need to change a single word of his myth of the cave. Our knowledge would not be able to…

— Lev Shestov

“But Dostoevsky does allow himself to ask just this very question: whether our reason has any right to judge between the possible…

— Lev Shestov

“Count Tolstoy preached inaction. It seems he had no need. We "inact" remarkably. Idleness, just that idleness Tolstoy dreamed of, a free,…

— Lev Shestov

If Darwin had seen in life what Dostoevsky saw, he would not have talked of the law of the preservation of species,…

— Lev Shestov

“Whatever our definition of truth may be, we can never renounce Descartes' clare et distincte (clarity and distinctness).”

— Lev Shestov

“Whilst stay-at-home persons are searching for truth, the apple will stay on the tree.”

— Lev Shestov

“This Aristotle knew definitely: the truth has the power to force or constrain men, all men alike, whether it be the great…

— Lev Shestov

“But it will be asked: What is the force and power of the blessings and curses of men, even if these men…

— Lev Shestov

“If Aristotle and his pupil Alexander the Great were brought back to life today, they would believe themselves in the country of…

— Lev Shestov

“St. Augustine hated the Stoics, Dostoevsky hated the Russian Liberals. At first sight this seems a quite inexplicable peculiarity. Both were convinced…

— Lev Shestov

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

— Lev Shestov

“The business of philosophy is to teach man to live in uncertainty... not to reassure him, but to upset him.”

— Lev Shestov

“Objectionable, tedious, irritating labour, - this is the condition of genius, which no doubt explains the reason why men so rarely achieve…

— Lev Shestov

“When man finds in himself a certain defect, of which he can by no means rid himself, there remains but to accept…

— Lev Shestov

Heretics were most often bitterly persecuted for the their least deviation from accepted belief. It was precisely their obstinacy about trifles that…

— Lev Shestov

“Moral people are the most revengeful of mankind, they employ their morality as the best and most subtle weapon of vengeance. They…

— Lev Shestov

“Many a present-day Alcibiades, who laves all the week in the muddy waters of life, comes on Sundays to cleanse himself in…

— Lev Shestov

“(...)on earth "everything has a beginning and nothing has an end.”

— Lev Shestov

“We very often express in a categorical form a judgment of which we do not feel assured, we even lay stress on…

— Lev Shestov

“If you turn to the right, you will marry, if to the left, you will be killed." A true philosopher never chooses…

— Lev Shestov

“If he tells the truth, it is because the most reeking lie no longer intoxicates him, even though he swallow it not…

— Lev Shestov

“One must not ask for sincere autobiographies from writers. Fiction was invented precisely to give men the possibility of expressing themselves freely.”

— Lev Shestov

“To define his tendency in a word, I would say that Chekhov was the poet of hopelessness. Stubbornly, sadly, monotonously, during all…

— Lev Shestov

“Herein lies the supreme wisdom, human and divine; and the task of philosophy consists in teaching men to submit joyously to Necessity…

— Lev Shestov

“But strange though it may seem, the more he judged, and the more he realized that men feared and acknowledged his right…

— Lev Shestov