“It wasn't the New World that mattered … Columbus died almost without seeing it; and not really knowing what he had discovered. It's life that matters, nothing but life — the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.”

—  Fyodor Dostoyevsky , book The Idiot

The Idiot (1868–9)
Context: It wasn't the New World that mattered … Columbus died almost without seeing it; and not really knowing what he had discovered. It's life that matters, nothing but life — the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all. But what's the use of talking! I suspect that all I'm saying now is so like the usual commonplaces that I shall certainly be taken for a lower-form schoolboy sending in his essay on "sunrise", or they'll say perhaps that I had something to say, but that I did not know how to "explain" it. But I'll add, that there is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps the most important of your ideas. But if I too have failed to convey all that has been tormenting me for the last six months, it will, anyway, be understood that I have paid very dearly for attaining my present "last conviction." This is what I felt necessary, for certain objects of my own, to put forward in my "Explanation". However, I will continue.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Jan. 12, 2025. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It wasn't the New World that mattered … Columbus died almost without seeing it; and not really knowing what he had disc…" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo
Fyodor Dostoyevsky 155
Russian author 1821–1881

Related quotes

Neale Donald Walsch photo

“The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery, but a process of creation. You are not discovering yourself, but creating yourself anew. Seek, therefore, not to find out Who You Are, seek to determine Who You Want to Be.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Variant: The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery, but a process of creation. You are not discovering yourself, but creating yourself anew. Seek therefore, not to find out Who You Are, but seek to determine Who You Want to Be.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo

“The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

G 42
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook G (1779-1783)

Neale Donald Walsch photo

“Think this: My Soul knows exactly what it is doing.
Also, think this: My Soul already knows what really matters.
So it is not a question of “finding” that answer, it is a question of remembering. It is not a process of discovery, it is a process of recovery. This data does not have to be researched, it merely has to be retrieved.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer
Chuck Klosterman photo

“In and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever in and of itself.”

Chuck Klosterman book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

Source: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

“Vision is the process of discovering from images what is present in the world, and where it is.”

David Marr (1945–1980) British neuroscientist and psychologist

Source: Vision, 1982, p. 3, cited in: M. R. Bennett, ‎P. M. S. Hacker (2012). History of Cognitive Neuroscience.

“We absorb attitudes as well as subject matter in the learning process. …the attitudes tend to determine what we see, and what we fail to see, in the subject matter. This is why attitude is just as important as content in the educational process.”

Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist

Introduction
The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962])

Tarik Gunersel photo

“The process of creative discovery is endless. That’s why “holiness” tends to limit mental vitality and progress by freezing a given work (a life guide) in time, no matter how interpretations differ and even change over the years.”

Tarik Gunersel (1953) Turkish actor

"A Conversation with Tarık Günersel -by Dawn Kotapish “ in World Literature Today (Jan-Feb 2011).
Other

Giovanni Morassutti photo

“For me personally, The Organic Creative Process helped me to discover what kind of actor I want to be; but this is a process that goes beyond acting. It actually revealed to me what I want to do in my life and that I have to work hard to make it real.”

Giovanni Morassutti (1980) Italian actor, theatre director and cultural entrepreneur.

Foreword https://www.academia.edu/39237479/Prefazione_di_Per_scelta_per_caso._Oltre_l_Actors_studio_by_John_Strasberg to Per scelta, per caso. Oltre l'Actors Studio by John Strasberg, published by Dino Audino editore (2016) https://www.audinoeditore.it/libro/9788875273347.

“But the process of social change was not merely a matter of new inventions pressing on old institutions: it was a matter of new classes displacing old ones.”

Robert L. Heilbroner book The Worldly Philosophers

Source: The Worldly Philosophers (1953), Chapter VI, Karl Marx, p. 137

“He looked at her then, and she could see he wasn't afraid.
"Nothing really dies as long as it's not forgotten," he said.”

L.J. Smith The Forbidden Game

Source: The Forbidden Game

Related topics