Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes

253 Sourced Quotes

The prince says that the world will be saved by beauty! And I maintain that the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It seemed clear to me that life and the world somehow depended upon me now. I may almost say that the world now seemed created for me alone: if I shot myself the world would cease to be at least for me. I say nothing of its being likely that nothing will exist for anyone when I am gone, and that as soon as my consciousness is extinguished the whole world will vanish too and become void like a phantom, as a mere appurtenance of my consciousness, for possibly all this world and all these people are only me myself.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
'But,' I [Dmitri Karamazov] asked, 'how will man be after that? Without God and the future life? It means everything is permitted now, one can do anything?' 'Didn't you know?' he said. And he laughed. 'Everything is permitted to the intelligent man,' he said.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind. And it is just this faith of mine that they laugh at. But how can I help believing it? I have seen the truth — it is not as though I had invented it with my mind, I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my soul for ever. I have seen it in such full perfection that I cannot believe that it is impossible for people to have it.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his punishment-as well as the prison.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"You're a gentleman," they used to say to him. "You shouldn't have gone murdering people with a hatchet; that's no occupation for a gentleman."

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It's chemistry, brother, chemistry. There's no help for it, your reverence, you must make way for chemistry.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
We must never forget that human motives are generally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of another.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness—a real thoroughgoing illness.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
To strive consciously for an object and to engage in engineering -- that is, incessantly and eternally to make new roads, wherever they may lead.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I go to spread the tidings, I want to spread the tidings — of what? Of the truth, for I have seen it, have seen it with my own eyes, have seen it in all its glory.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
If you can put the question, Am I or am I not responsible for my acts then you are responsible.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Is it really not possible to touch the gaming table without being instantly infected by superstition?

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Originality and a feeling of one's own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
One must first learn to live oneself before one blames others.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
But profound as psychology is, it's a knife that cuts both ways.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
All became so jealous of the rights of their own personality that they did their very utmost to curtail and destroy them in others, and made that the chief thing in their lives. Slavery followed, even voluntary slavery; the weak eagerly submitted to the strong, on condition that the latter aided them to subdue the still weaker. Then there were saints who came to these people, weeping, and talked to them of their pride, of their loss of harmony and due proportion, of their loss of shame. They were laughed at or pelted with stones.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The sky was horribly dark, but one could distinctly see tattered clouds, and between them fathomless black patches. Suddenly I noticed in one of these patches a star, and began watching it intently. That was because that star had given me an idea: I decided to kill myself that night.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I will put up with any mockery rather than pretend that I am satisfied when I am hungry.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The jealous are the readiest of all to forgive, and all women know it.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
You pass by a little child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You don't know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky