Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Man Quotes

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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
And what is it in us that is mellowed by civilization? All it does, I'd say, is to develop in man a capacity to feel a greater variety of sensations. And nothing, absolutely nothing else. And through this development, man will yet learn how to enjoy bloodshed. Why, it has already happened.... Civilization has made man, if not always more bloodthirsty, at least more viciously, more horribly bloodthirsty.

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

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
How does it come about that what an intelligent man expresses is much stupider than what remains inside him?

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I tell Thee that man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creatures is born. But only one who can appease their conscience can take over their freedom […] Instead of taking men's freedom from them, Thou didst make it greater than ever! Didst Thou forget that man prefers peace, and even death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil?

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
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
There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God?

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
Anyone who can appease a man's conscience can take his freedom away from him.

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
Everything is in a man's own hands, and if he lets everything slip through his fingers, it is through sheer cowardice. That's an axiom.

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
But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure? Answer: Of himself. Well, so I will talk about myself.

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

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.

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

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
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
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
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
So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I am a sick man… I am a wicked man. An unattractive man.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice.

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
A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others.

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

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
Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!

Fyodor Dostoyevsky