Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes

253 Sourced Quotes

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him.

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

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

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

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

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

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

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

The more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

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

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

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

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

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

Therefore, in my incontrovertible capacity as plaintiff and defendant judge and accused, I condemn this nature, which has so brazenly and unceremoniously inflicted this suffering... since I am unable to destroy Nature, I am destroying myself, solely out of weariness of having to endure a tyranny in which there is no guilty party.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Come, try, give any one of us, for instance, a little more independence, untie our hands, widen the spheres of our activity, relax the control and we...yes, I assure you...we should be begging to be under control again at once.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I want peace; yes, I'd sell the whole world for a farthing, straight off, so long as I was left in peace. Is the world to go to pot, or am I to go without my tea? I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I always get my tea. Did you know that, or not? Well, anyway, I know that I am a blackguard, a scoundrel, an egoist, a sluggard.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The meanest and most hateful thing about money is that it even gives one talent.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Sometimes we desire absolute nonsense because in our stupidity we see in this nonsense the easiest way of attaining some conjectural good.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I've made a terrible confession to you, he concluded gloomily. Do appreciate it, gentlemen. And it's not enough, not enough to appreciate it, you must not just appreciate it, it should also be precious to you, and if not, if this, too, goes past your souls, then it means you really do not respect me, gentlemen. I tell you that, and I will die of shame at having confessed to such men as you.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Pray to God for gladness. Be glad as children, as the birds of heaven. And let not the sin of men confound you in your doings. Fear not that it will wear away your work and hinder its being accomplished. Do not say, 'Sin is mighty, wickedness is mighty, evil environment is mighty, and we are lonely and helpless, and evil environment is wearing us away and hindering our good work from being done.' Fly from that dejection, children!

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In the newspapers I read a biography about an American. He left his whole huge fortune to factories and for the positive sciences, his skeleton to the students at the academy there, and his skin to make a drum so as to have the American national anthem drummed on it day and night.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast?

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You can never be sure of what has passed between husband and wife or lover and mistress.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky