Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Man Quotes

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The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.
Variant translation: 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 to the mind is shameful is beauty and nothing else to the heart. Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in Sodom. Did you know that secret? The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.

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
Love animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, don't harass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you - alas, it is true of almost every one of us!

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for.

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

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
When… in the course of all these thousands of years has man ever acted in accordance with his own interests?

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
I have no self-respect. But can a man of acute sensibility respect himself at all?

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
One's own free unfettered choice, one's own caprice-however wild it may be, one's own fancy worked up at times to frenzy-is that very "most advantageous advantage" which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms... [an]will attain his object-that is, convince himself he is a man and not a piano-key!

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I may be mistaken but it seems to me that a man may be judged by his laugh, and that if at first encounter you like the laugh of a person completely unknown to you, you may say with assurance that he is good.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
People talk sometimes of a bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
One could never judge a man without seeing him close, for oneself...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I am a sick man...I am a spiteful man. I am a most unpleasant man.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The more cunning a man is, the less he suspects that he will be caught in a simple thing. The more cunning a man is, the simpler the trap he must be caught in.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
To crush, to annihilate a man utterly, to inflict on him the most terrible punishment so that the most ferocious murderer would shudder at it beforehand, one need only give him work of an absolutely, completely useless and irrational character.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I have never in my life met a man like him for noble simplicity, and boundless truthfulness. I understood from the way he talked that anyone who chose could deceive him, and that he would forgive anyone afterwards who had deceived him, and that was why I grew to love him.

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

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
'But,' I [Dmitri Karamazov] asked, 'how will man be after that? Without God and the future life? It means everything is permitted now, one can do anything?' 'Didn't you know?' he said. And he laughed. 'Everything is permitted to the intelligent man,' he said.

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

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn?" Marmeladov's question came suddenly into his mind "for every man must have somewhere to turn...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect. Now, I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything.

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