Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes

253 Sourced Quotes

Since I wasn't consulted at the time of the creation of the world, I reserve for myself the right to have my own opinion about it.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
For the secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for. Without a stable conception of the object of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather destroy himself than remain on earth, though he had bread in abundance.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
He seemed, indeed, to accept everything without the least condemnation though often grieving bitterly.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote and infinite time and space, but here on Earth...I want to see with my own eyes the lamb lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been about. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
You are a man still young, so to say, in your first youth and so put intellect above everything...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better - cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking into these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him!

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Russia was a slave in Europe but would be a master in Asia.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind-then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it's all as it should be.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we refuse to see it.

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
Being at a loss to resolve these questions, I am resolved to leave them without any resolution.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
To a commonplace man of limited intellect, for instance, nothing is simpler than to imagine himself an original character, and to revel in that belief without the slightest misgiving.

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

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The more you succeed in loving, the more you'll be convinced at the existence of God and the immortality of your soul.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Break what must be broken, once for all, that's all, and take the suffering on oneself.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
That's just the point: an honest and sensitive man opens his heart, and the man of business goes on eating - and then he eats you up.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
For what is man without desires, without free will, and without the power of choice but a stop in an organ pipe?

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
Power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare!

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A single day is sufficient for a man to discover what happiness is.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The world has proclaimed the reign of freedom, especially of late, but what do we see in this freedom of theirs? Nothing but slavery and self-destruction! For the world says: "You have desires and so satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the most rich and powerful. Don't be afraid of satisfying them and even multiply your desires."

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
By interpreting freedom as the propagation and immediate gratification of needs, people distort their own nature, for they engender in themselves a multitude of pointless and foolish desires, habits, and incongruous stratagems. Their lives are motivated only by mutual envy, sensuality, and ostentation.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Happiness lies not in happiness but only in the attempt to achieve it.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Psychology lures even most serious people into romancing, and quite unconsciously.

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

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Let us first fulfill Christ's injunction ourselves and only then venture to expect it of our children. Otherwise we are not fathers, but enemies of our children, and they are not our children, but our enemies, and we have made them our enemies ourselves.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky