Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes

253 Sourced Quotes

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
Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
But to fall in love does not mean to love. One can fall in love and still hate.

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 terrible tragedies realism inflicts on people.

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
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
Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it — that is what you must do.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
She looked much younger than her age, indeed, which is almost always the case with women who retain serenity of spirit, sensitiveness and pure sincere warmth of heart to old age.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.

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

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

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
There is no explaining anything by reasoning and so it is useless to reason.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Once it's been proved to you that you're descended from an ape, it's no use pulling a face; just accept it. Once they've proved to you that a single droplet of your own fat must be dearer to you than a hundred thousand of your fellow human beings and consequently that all so-called virtues and duties are nothing but ravings and prejudices, then accept that too, because there's nothing to be done.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea. And there is only one higher idea on earth, and it is the idea of the immortality of the human soul, for all other "higher" ideas of life by which humans might live derive from that idea alone.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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 study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It's easier for a Russian to become an atheist than for anyone else in the world.

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

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
But what are years, what are months!" he would exclaim. "Why count the days, when even one day is enough for man to know all happiness.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

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