Quotes / Fyodor Dostoevsky / Demons
Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. It's only that.
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, spoken by Kirillov
Genuine Found word for word in the work, in the original and in a public-domain translation.Draft entry, not yet reviewed
Всё. Человек несчастлив потому, что не знает, что он счастлив; только потому. Это всё, всё! Кто узнает, тотчас сейчас станет счастлив, сию минуту.
Everything. Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. It's only that. That's all, that's all! If anyone finds out he'll become happy at once, that minute.
- Work
- Demons, 1872
- Where
- Part 2, chapter 1 ("Night"), section 5
- Speaker
- Kirillov
- To
- Nikolay Stavrogin
The scene
On his night of visits Stavrogin finds the engineer Kirillov, who has just been playing ball with his landlady's baby. Kirillov tells him of moments when time stops, of a yellow leaf, and says 'everything is good'; asked whether it is good when someone dies of hunger or outrages a little girl, he says yes, for those who know it is good. He has stopped his clock at 2.37 and speaks of the coming 'man-god'. He is the man who has promised to shoot himself when the conspirators ask, and he does so in Part 3.
Read it in the text
Часть вторая · V
- Н-нет... зачем? Я не аллегорию, я просто лист, один лист. Лист хорош. Всё хорошо.
- Всё?
- Всё. Человек несчастлив потому, что не знает, что он счастлив; только потому. Это всё, всё! Кто узнает, тотчас сейчас станет счастлив, сию минуту. Эта свекровь умрет, а девочка останется - всё хорошо. Я вдруг от крыл.
- А кто с голоду умрет, а кто обидит и обесчестит девочку - это хорошо?
- Хорошо. И кто размозжит голову за ребенка, и то хорошо; и кто не размозжит, и то хорошо. Всё хорошо, всё. Всем тем хорошо, кто знает, что всё хорошо. Если б они знали, что им хорошо, то им было бы хорошо, но пока они не знают, что им хорошо, то им будет нехорошо. Вот вся мысль, вся, больше нет никакой!
PART II · V · Constance Garnett
"N-no... why? I'm not speaking of an allegory, but of a leaf, only a leaf. The leaf is good. Everything's good."
"Everything?"
"Everything. Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. It's only that. That's all, that's all! If anyone finds out he'll become happy at once, that minute. That mother-in-law will die; but the baby will remain. It's all good. I discovered it all of a sudden."
"And if anyone dies of hunger, and if anyone insults and outrages the little girl, is that good?"
"Yes! And if anyone blows his brains out for the baby, that's good too. And if anyone doesn't, that's good too. It's all good, all. It's good for all those who know that it's all good. If they knew that it was good for them, it would be good for them, but as long as they don't know it's good for them, it will be bad for them. That's the whole idea, the whole of it."
What it says
Unhappiness is only ignorance of one's own happiness: the moment a person knows it, he is happy.
How it is misread
Passed around as gentle advice to count one's blessings. In the novel it belongs to Kirillov's ecstatic, near-epileptic vision that everything is good, including the violation of a child, and that vision feeds his idea of suicide as proof of man's godhood. Stavrogin, to whom he says it, is the man who in the suppressed chapter 'At Tikhon's' confesses to exactly such an outrage.
Tags
What it is made of
Nearby
- If there is no God, then I am God. related
- It's life that matters, nothing but life — the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all. alike 45%
- Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness. alike 44%
- The price of loving someone very much is never loving anyone again. alike 42%
- We are each responsible to all for all. alike 41%
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