Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes

253 Sourced Quotes

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

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Every decent man of our age must be a coward and a slave. That is his normal condition. Of that I am firmly persuaded. He is made and constructed to that very end. And not only at the present time owing to some casual circumstance, but always, at all times, a decent man is bound to be a coward and a slave.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature... and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Petersburg, the most abstract and premeditated city on earth.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those whom they have slain.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
And now once again I asked myself the question: do I love her? And once more I could not answer, that is to say, again, for the hundreth time, I answered that I hated her.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Schoolboys are a merciless race, individually they are angels, but together, especially in schools, they are often merciless.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. It's only that.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Brother, I'm not depressed and haven't lost spirit. Life everywhere is life, life is in ourselves and not in the external. There will be people near me, and to be a human being among human beings, and remain one forever, no matter what misfortunes befall, not to become depressed, and not to falter – this is what life is, herein lies its task.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
What terrible tragedies realism inflicts on people.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Believe to the end, even if all men went astray and you were left the only one faithful; bring your offering even then and praise God in your loneliness.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
They have their Hamlets, but we still have our Karamazovs!

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
They had no temples, but they had a real living and uninterrupted sense of oneness with the whole of the universe; they had no creed, but they had a certain knowledge that when their earthly joy had reached the limits of earthly nature, then there would come for them, for the living and for the dead, a still greater fullness of contact with the whole of the universe. They looked forward to that moment with joy, but without haste, not pining for it, but seeming to have a foretaste of it in their hearts, of which they talked to one another.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It suddenly seemed to me that I was lonely, that every one was forsaking me and going away from me. Of course, any one is entitled to ask who every one was. For though I had been living almost eight years in Petersburg I had hardly an acquaintance. But what did I want with acquaintances? I was acquainted with all Petersburg as it was...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I know that you don't believe it, but indeed, life will bring you through. You will live it down in time. What you need now is fresh air, fresh air, fresh air!

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with the love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one's life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and eveyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and persistence, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Talking nonsense is man's only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Man is a creature that can get used to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Without some goal and some effort to reach it, no man can live. When he has lost all hope, all object in life, man becomes a monster in his misery.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
For all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young, dear reader.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
You will have many enemies, but even your foes will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will find your happiness in them, and will bless life and will make others bless it-which is what matters most.

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

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Don't think I'm talking nonsense because I'm drunk. I'm not a bit drunk. Brandy's all very well, but I need two bottles to make me drunk.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It was evident that he revived by fits and starts. He would suddenly come to himself from actual delirium for a few minutes; he would remember and talk with complete consciousness, chiefly in disconnected phrases which he had perhaps thought out and learnt by heart in the long weary hours of his illness, in his bed, in sleepless solitude.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky