Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes (341 Quotes)

Hesitation, anxiety, the struggle between belief and disbelief-all that is sometimes such a torment for a conscientious man... that it's better to hang oneself.

I think thus of Satan's pride: it is difficult for us on earth to comprehend it, and therefore, how easy it is to fall into error and partake of it, thinking, moreover, that we are doing something great and beautiful.

It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the riotous blood of youth.

Loving someone is different from being in love with someone. You can hate someone you're in love with

So that you remember that you kissed my hand, but I didn't kiss yours.

There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant!

Well, set the monster free...he's begun his hymn, because he finds it all so easy...but I'd give a quadrillion quadrillion for two seconds of joy.

A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.

It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.

You say I haven't any orginality. But mark this, dear Prince, there's nothing more annoying for a man of our time and race than to tell him he's not original, a weak character with no special talents, ordinary in other words. You didn't even deign to regard me as a genuine rogue, I felt like killing you for that just now, you know that?

Every man looks out for himself, and he has the happiest life who manages to hoodwink himself best of all.

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

The first category is always the man of the present, the second the man of the future. The first preserve the world and people it, the second move the world and lead it to its goal.

A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments.

However, do you know what? I am convinced that fellows like me who live in dark cellars must be kept under restraint. They may be able to live in their dark cellars for forty years and never open their mouths, but the moment they get into the light of day and break out they may talk and talk and talk...

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.

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.

An angel in heaven I've told already; but I want to tell an angel on earth.

But the church, like a tender, loving mother holds aloof from active punishment herself, as the sinner is too severely punished already by the civil law, and there must be at least someone to have pity on him. The church holds aloof, above all, because its judgment alone contains the truth...

For everyone now strives most of all to seperate his person, wishing to experience the fullness of life within himself, and yet what comes of all his efforts is not the fullness of life, but full suicide, for instead of the fullness of self-definition, they fall into complete isolation.

How good life is when one does something good and just!

I understand solidarity in sin among men; solidarity in retribution I also understand; but what solidarity in sin do little children have? ...And if the suffering of children goes to make up the sum of suffering needed to buy truth, then I assert beforehand that the whole of truth is not worth such a price.

I've found out more in this one cursed night than I'd have learned in twenty years of living.

Man is broad, too broad, indeed. I'd have him narrower.

Sometimes even if he has to do it alone, and his conduct seems to be crazy, a man must set an example, and so draw men's souls out of their solitude and spur them to some act of brotherly love, that the great idea may not die.

There is no virtue if there is no immortality.

What is the use of Christ's words, unless we set an example?

And I fancy, besides, that we seem like such different people ... through various circumstances, that we cannot perhaps have many points in common. But yet I don't believe in that last idea myself, for it often only seems that there are no points in common, when there really are some ... it's just laziness that makes people classify themselves according to appearances, and fail to find anything in common.... But perhaps I am boring you? You seem ...

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.

A hundred suspicions don't make a proof.

Existence alone had never been enough for him; he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was only from the force of his desires that he had regarded himself as a man to whom more was permitted than to others.

My killing a loathsome, harmful louse, a filthy old moneylender woman who brought no good to anyone, to murder whom would pardon forty sins, who sucked the lifeblood of the poor, and you call that a crime ?

The harmonious man, it needs to be said, hardly exists at all; out of many tens, even hundreds of thousands perhaps one or two at most are encountered, and even then in rather feeble versions.

A developed and decent man cannot be vain without a boundless exactingness towards himself and without despising himself at moments to the point of hatred.

I agree that two times two makes four is an excellent thing; but if we are dispensing praise, then two times two makes five is sometimes a most charming little thing as well.

Just take a look around you: Blood is flowing in rivers and in such a jolly way you'd think it was champagne.

They won't let me ... I can't be ... good!

And do you know, I came with horror to the conclusion that, if anything could dissipate my love for humanity, it would be ingratitude. In short, I am a hired servant, I expect my payment at once--that is, praise, and the repayment of love with love. Otherwise I am incapable of loving anyone.

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

For if there's no everlasting God, there's no such thing as virtue, and there's no need of it.

Humanity will find in itself the power to live for virtue even without believing in immortality. It will find it in love for freedom, for equality, for fraternity.

I want to suffer and be purified by suffering!

Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more. Such grief does not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense of hopelessness. Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to re-open the wound.

Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to the 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!

Stupidity is honest and straightforward.

There is nothing more alluring to man than freedom of conscience, but neither is there anything more agonizing.

Where did the light come from on the first day?

Anyone who attacks individual charity, attacks human nature and casts contempt on personal dignity.

Lunatics! Vain creatures! They don't believe in God, they don't believe in Christ! Why, you are so eaten up with pride and vanity that you'll end up by eating one another, that's what I prophesy.

Actions are sometimes performed in a masterly and most cunning way, while the direction of the actions is deranged and dependent on various morbid impressions - it's like a dream.