Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes

253 Sourced Quotes

I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It is necessary that every man have at least somewhere to go. For there are times when one absolutely must go at least somewhere!

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is usually made up of nothing but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Though I do not believe in the order of things, still the sticky little leaves that come out in the spring are dear to me, the blue sky is dear to me, some people are dear to me, whom one loves sometimes, would you believe it, without even knowing why; some human deeds are dear to me, which one has perhaps long ceased believing in, but still honors with one's heart, out of old habit...
Ivan Karamazov speaking

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don't want harmony. From love for humanity I don't want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it's beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I saw clear as daylight how strange it is that not a single person living in this mad world has had the daring to go straight for it all and send it flying to the devil! I...I wanted to have the daring...and I killed her.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it's good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.

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

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
They may all be drunk at my place, but they're all honest, and though we do lie-because I lie, too-in the end we'll lie our way to the truth

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I don't need money, or, better, it's not money that I need; it's not even power; I need only what is obtained by power and simply cannot be obtained without power: the solitary and calm awareness of strength! That is the fullest definition of freedom, which the world so struggles over!

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
What do I care for the laws of nature and arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact that twice two makes four?

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