Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes (341 Quotes)

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

I just said it for the beauty of the style.

Is it possible that I've suffered so that I, together with my evil deeds and sufferings, should be manure for someone's future harmony? I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion, and the murdered man rise up and embrace his murderer.

Love is a teacher, but one must know how to acquire it, for it is difficult to acquire, it is dearly bought, by long work over a long time, for one ought to love not for a chance moment but for all time. Anyone, even a wicked man, can love by chance.

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.

The righteous man departs, but his light remains.

To consider freedom as directly dependent on the number of man's requirements and the extent of their immediate satisfaction shows a twisted understanding of human nature, for such an interpretation only breeds in men a multitude of senseless, stupid desires and habits and endless preposterous inventions.

You know, when children are silent and proud, and they try to keep back their tears when they are in great trouble and suddenly break down, their tears fall in streams.

I almost do not exist now and I know it; God knows what lives in me in place of me.

To a commonplace man of limited intellect, for instance, nothing is simpler than to imagine himself an original character, and to revel in that belief without the slightest misgiving.

Catch several hares and you won't catch one.

It's because I chatter that I do nothing. Or perhaps it is that I chatter because I do nothing.

Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.

What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?

Evidently habit does wonders! God knows what habit can do with anyone.

I will put up with any mockery rather than pretend that I am satisfied when I am hungry.

Perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything.

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.

Being in love doesn't mean loving.

Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith. If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also.

He thirsted for this resurrection and renewal. The vile bog he had gotten stuck in of his own free will burdened him too much, and, like a great many men in such cases, he believed most of all in a change of place: if only it weren't for these people, if only it weren't for these circumstances, if only one could fly away from the curses place--then everything would be reborn! That was what he believed in and what he longed for.

I maintain that he is in his right mind, and that if he had not been, he would have behaved more cleverly.

It is not the real punishment. The only effectual one, the only deterrent and softening one, lies in the recognition of sin by conscience.

Love is such a priceless treasure that you can buy the whole world with it, and redeem not only your own but other people's sins. Go, and do not be afraid.

Remember especially that you cannot be the judge of anyone. For there can be no judge of a criminal on earth until the judge knows that he, too, is a criminal, exactly the same as the one who stands before him, and that he is perhaps most guilty of all for the crime of the one standing before him.

The torments of a proud decision, a deep conscience! God, in whom he did not believe, and his truth were overcoming his heart, which still did not want to submit.

To my thinking, miracles are never a stumbling block to the realist. It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief...Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith.

You pass by a little child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You don't know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love.

I must add... my gratitude to you for the attention with which you have listened to me, for, from my numerous observations, our Liberals are never capable of letting anyone else have a conviction of his own without at once meeting their opponent with abuse or even something worse.

We degrade Providence too much by attributing our ideas to it out of annoyance at being unable to understand it.

Clearly, he now had not to be anguished, not to suffer passively, by mere reasoning about unresolvable questions, but to do something without fail, at once, quickly.

It's the moon that makes it so still, weaving some mystery.

That's as it should be, they tell us. A certain percentage, they tell us, must every year go, that way, to the devil, I suppose, so that the rest may remain chaste, and not be interfered with. A percentage! What splendid words they have; they are so scientific, so consolatory.

What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind-then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it's all as it should be.

For a woman, all resurrection, all salvation, from whatever perdition, lies in love; in fact, it is her only way to it.

I will tell you another thing that would be better, and that is, if I myself believe even an iota of what I have just written. I swear to you, gentlemen, that I do not really believe one thing, not even one word, of what I have just written. That is, I believe it, perhaps, but at the same time, I feel suspect that I am lying myself blue in the face.

Sometimes I'd hate to talk to anyone, and at other times I'd not only talk to people, but would even take it into my head to be friends with them.

Ah, Misha, he has a stormy spirit. His mind is in bondage. He is haunted by a great, unsolved doubt. He is one of those who don't want millions, but an answer to their questions.

Believe to the end, even if all men went astray and you were left the only one faithful; bring your offering even then and praise God in your loneliness.

Fancy pants, the monk can dance!

He who loves men, loves their joy.

I punish myself for my whole life, my whole life I punish.

It was impossible to tell at first sight whether he loved his meek, obedient wife, Marfa. But he really did lover her, and she knew it.

Love it, regardless of logic as you say. It must be regardless of logic.

Schoolboys are a merciless race, individually they are angels, but together, especially in schools, they are often merciless.

The world stands on absurdities, and without them perhaps nothing at all would happen.

To whom is he to go if you are not together, mother and father?

You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.

I think that if one is faced by inevitable destruction -- if a house is falling upon you, for instance -- one must feel a great longing to sit down, close one's eyes and wait, come what may . . .

We must name the eminent and fascinating Prince N. - once the vanquisher of female hearts all over Europe.