Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.

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.

To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.

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

We do not understand that life is paradise, for it suffices only to wish to understand it, and at once paradise will appear in front of us in its beauty.

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

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.

Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.

Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.

I love you so, because you haven't fallen in love with me. Another man in your place would, I'm sure, have begun to pester me, to worry me. He would have been sighing, he would have looked so pathetic, but you're so sweet!

We degrade God too much, ascribing to him our ideas, in vexation at being unable to understand Him.

But in those eyes and in the lines of her exquisite lips there was something with which his brother might well be passionately in love, but which perhaps could not be loved for long.

And I saw myselt just as I was now fifteen years hence, only grown older, is the same room, living the same sort of solitary life, with the same Matryona, who had not grown a bit wiser in all those years.

An elder was one who took your soul, your will, into his soul and his will. When you choose an elder, you renounce your own will and yield it to him in complete submission, complete self-abnegation just like some Muslims who conseiders their sheikh as holy, some christians worship their (elder).

Who doesn't desire his father's death?

Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.

What terrible tragedies realism inflicts on people.

Life is in ourselves and not in the external.

The best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful.

But try getting blindly carried away by your feelings, without reasoning, without a primary cause, driving conciousness away at least for a time; start hating; or fall in love, only so as not to sit with folded arms.

In any case, you must remember, my dearest, that the main strength of innocence is innocence itself. farewell.

What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning.

I want to suffer so that I may love.

All the Utopias will come to pass only when we grow wings and all people are converted into angels.

But man is so addicted to systems and to abstract conclusions that he is prepared deliberately to distort the truth, to close his eyes and ears, but justify his logic at all cost.

The absurd is only too necessary on earth. The world stands on absurdities.

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

I've always considered myself smarter than everyone around me, and sometimes, believe me, I've been ashamed of it. At the least, all my life I've looked away and never could look people straight in the eye.

My soul bleeds and the blood steadily, silently, disturbingly slowly, swallows me whole.

Humanity can live without science, it can live without bread, but it cannot live without beauty. Without beauty, there would be nothing left to do in this life. Here the secret lies. Here lies the entire story.

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

If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.

Without a clear perception of his reasons for living, man will never consent to live, and will rather destroy himself than tarry on earth, though he be surrounded with bread.

From harmony, from heavenly harmony, This universal frame began: From harmony to harmony Through all the compass of the notes it ran, The diapason closing full in Man.

Walking along the crowded row He met the one he used to know.

The most pressing question on the problem of faith is whether a man as a civilized being can believe in the divinity of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, for therein rests the whole of our faith.

Never mind a little dirt, if the goal is splendid!

And you're sorry that the ephemeral beauty has faded so rapidly, so irretrievably, that it flashed so deceptively and pointlessly before your eyes -- you're sorry, for you didn't even have time to fall in love.

Now answer me, sincerely, honestly, who lives past forty? I'll tell you who does: fools and scoundrels.

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.

The more incompetent one feels, the more eager he is to fight.

I walked along Nevsky Avenue.Actually it was more torture, humiliation, and bilious irritation than a stroll.

But men love abstract reasoning and neat systematization so much that they think nothing of distorting the truth, closing their eyes and ears to contrary evidence to preserve their logical constructions.

They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown less.

You can never be sure of what has passed between husband and wife or lover and mistress.

It is easier for a Russian to become an atheist than for anyone else in the world.

Suffering is part and parcel of extensive intelligence and a feeling heart.

There is no object on earth which cannot be looked at from a cosmic point of view.

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.

Do you understand that the Luzhin smartness is just the same thing as Sonia's and may be worse, viler, baser, because in your case, Dounia, it 's a bargain for luxuries, after all, but with Sonia it's simply a question of starvation.

The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.

There is only one way to salvation, and that is to make yourself responsible for all men's sins. As soon as you make yourself responsible in all sincerity for everything and for everyone, you will see at once that this is really so, and that you are in fact to blame for everyone and for all things.

The greater the stupidity, the greater the clarity. Stupidity is brief and guileless, while wit equivocates and hides. Wit is a scoundrel, while stupidity is honest and sincere.

There are crimes that are truly uncomely. With crimes, whatever they may be, the more blood, the more horror there is, the more imposing they are, the more picturesque, so to speak, but there are crimes that are shameful, disgraceful, all horror aside, so to speak, even far too ungracious.

We're originals...they should put us all under glass and show us to people, me first, ten kopecks for admission.

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.

So, according to you, the other God does exist after all?'
'He doesn't exist, but He is. There's no pain in a stone, but there's pain in the fear of a stone.

The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was 'sublime and beautiful,'the more deeply I sank into my mire and the more ready I was to sink in it altogether.

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.

I go to spread the tidings, I want to spread the tidings of what? Of the truth , for I have seen it, have seen it with my own eyes , have seen it in all its glory .

Trifles, trifles are what matter!

My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?

Everywhere I am the object of an unbelievable esteem, the interest in me is, quite simply, tremendous.

Drive nature out of the door and it will fly in at the window.

A widow, the mother of a family, and from her heart she produces chords to which my whole being responds.

Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.

Man is a pliable animal, a being who gets accustomed to everything!

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

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

In a way there's only a fine shade of difference between the healthy and the deranged.

If he's honest, he'll steal; if he's human, he'll murder; if he's faithful, he'll deceive.

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

It is a law of nature that every decent man on earth is bound to be a coward and a slave.

There is immeasurably more left inside than what comes out in words. Your thought, even a bad one, while it is with you, is always more profound, but in words it is more ridiculous and dishonorable.

Beggars, especially noble beggars, should never show themselves in the street; they should ask for alms through the newspapers. It's still possible to love one's neighbor abstractly, and even occasionally from a distance, but hardly ever up close.

If the people around you are spiteful and callous and will not hear you, fall down before them and beg their forgiveness; for in truth you are to blame for their not wanting to hear you.

Two and two make four. Nature doesn't ask your advice. She isn't interested in your preferences or whether or not you approve of her laws. You must accept nature as she is with all the consequences that that implies.

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

Reality is infinitely diverse, compared with even the subtlest conclusions of abstract thought, and does not allow of clear-cut and sweeping distinctions. Reality resists classification.

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

I don't even know what I'm writing, I have no idea, I don't know anything, and I'm not reading over it, and I'm not correcting my style, and I'm writing just for the sake of writing, just for the sake of writing more to you… My precious, my darling, my dearest!

Forgive me... for my love -for ruining you with my love.

There is, indeed, nothing more annoying than to be, for instance, wealthy, of good family, nice-looking, fairly intelligent, and even good-natured, and yet to have no talents, no special faculty, no peculiarity even, not one idea of one's own, to be precisely like other people.

It was a marvelous night, the sort of night one only experiences when one is young. The sky was so bright, and there were so many stars that, gazing upward, one couldn't help wondering how so many whimsical, wicked people could live under such a sky.

It suddenly seemed to me that I was lonely, that everyone was forsaking me and going away from me.

The Golden Age is the most implausible of all dreams. But for it men have given up their life and strength; for the sake of it prophets have died and been slain; without it the people will not live and cannot die.

I cannot truly imagine a truly great person who hasn't suffered.

What you need more than anything in life is a definite position.

There is not a thing that is more positive than bread.

One can't understand everything at once, we can't begin with perfection all at once! In order to reach perfection one must begin by being ignorant of a great deal. And if we understand things too quickly, perhaps we shan't understand them thoroughly.

Finally, I couldn't imagine how I could live without books, and I stopped dreaming about marrying that Chinese prince .

I do not wish you much happiness -- it would bore you; I do not wish you trouble either; but, following the people's philosophy, I will simply repeat: 'Live more' and try somehow not to be too bored; this useless wish I am adding on my own.

Often a man endures for several years, submits and suffers the cruellest punishments, and then suddenly breaks out over some minute trifle, almost nothing at all.

At first it was simply liking, Nastenka, but now, now ! I am just in the same position as you were when you went to him with your bundle. In a worse position than you, Nastenka,because he cared for no one else as you do.

Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive?

Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side.

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 more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.

Besides, nowadays, almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.

This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness.

It is always so, when we are unhappy we feel more strongly the unhappiness of others; our feeling is not shattered, but becomes concentrated.

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.

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

If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his punishment-as well as the prison.

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.

Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from the faith.

Every ant  knows the  formula of its ant-hill, every  bee knows  the formula  of its  beehive. They know it  in their own way, not in our way. Only humankind does not know its own formula.

You sensed that you should be following a different path, a more ambitious one, you felt that you were destined for other things but you had no idea how to achieve them and in your misery you began to hate everything around you.

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.

Lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth.

For I love the empress of my soul. I love and I cannot but love. You yourself see the whole of me. I shall fly to her, fall down before her: you were right to walk past me.. farewell and forget your victim, never trouble yourself more!

Do you believe in a future everlasting life? No, not in a future everlasting but in an everlasting life here. There are moments, you reach moments, and time comes to a sudden stop, and it will become eternal.

It wasn't the New World that mattered... Columbus died almost without seeing it; and not really knowing what he had discovered. It's life that matters, nothing but life -- the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.

But how could you live and have no story to tell?

Existentialism isn't so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn't exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing.

I agree that two and two make four is an excellent thing; but to give everything its due, two and two make five is also a very fine thing.

If God does not exist, everything is permitted.

God knows what lives in me in place of me.

For men are made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.'

There is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and useful for life in later years than some good memory, especially a memory connected with childhood, with home.

Everything will come in due course, if you have the gumption to wait for it.

Catch several hares and you won't catch one.

You're a gentleman, they used to say to him. You shouldn't have gone murdering people with a hatchet; that's no occupation for a gentleman.

Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to the animals, for they are without sin, while you, with all your greatness, you defile the earth wherever you appear and leave an ignoble trail behind you -- and that is true, alas, for almost every one of us!

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?

When I look back at the past and think of all the time I squandered in error and idleness,... then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift... every minute could have been an eternity of happiness! If only youth knew! Now my life will change; now I will be reborn.

And it is so simple... The one thing is -- love thy neighbor as thyself -- that is the one thing. That is all, nothing else is needed. You will instantly find how to live.

Learning to love is hard and we pay dearly for it. It takes hard work and a long apprenticeship, for it is not just for a moment that we must learn to love, but forever.

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.

I have in my own life merely carried to the extreme that which you have never ventured to carry even halfway ; and what's more, you've regarded your cowardice as prudence, and found comfort in deceiving yourselves. So that, in fact, I may be even more alive than you are. Do take a closer look!

To strive consciously for an object and to engage in engineering -- that is, incessantly and eternally to make new roads, wherever they may lead.

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!

I am crazy about mysterious things.

Suppose, gentleman, that man is not stupid.

I bless the rising sun each day, and, as before, my heart sings to meet it, but now I love even more its setting, its long slanting rays and the soft tender gentle memories that come with them...' -Father Zossima.

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.

Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends.

To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it's good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things.

To be acutely conscious is a disease, a real, honest-to-goodness disease.

For what is man without desires, without free will, and without the power of choice but a stop in an organ pipe?

Every man needs a place to go to.

If I seem happy to you ... You could never say anything that would please me more. For men are made for happiness, and anyone who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.' All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.

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.

I've long stopped worrying about who invented whom -- God man or man God.

Break what must be broken, once for all, that's all, and take the suffering on oneself.

When reason fails, the devil helps!

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

And in fact you're not like everyone else: you weren't ashamed just now to confess bad and even ridiculous things about yourself. Who would confess such things nowadays? No one, and people have even stopped feeling any need for self-judgment.

Right attitudes produces right action.

There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.

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.

I feel pity for him, and that is a poor sign of love.

Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.

Atheism: It seeks to replace in itself the moral power of religion, in order to appease the spiritual thirst of parched humanity and save it; not by Christ, but by force.

They were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other.

May you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of one's life?

They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?

Hold your tongue; you won't understand anything. If there is no God, then I am God.

That's always the way with fanatics; they cross themselves at the tavern and throw stones at the temple.

Don't think I'm talking nonsense because I'm drunk. I'm not a bit drunk. Brandy's all very well, but I need two bottles to make me drunk.

Times of crisis, of disruption or constructive change, are not only predictable, but desirable. They mean growth. Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.

In summer, intolerable closeness; in winter, unendurable cold. All the floors were rotten. Filth on the floors an inch thick; one could slip and fall.

Viper will eat viper, and it would serve them both right!

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.

To cook your hare you must first catch it.

Let us not forget that the reasons for human actions are usually incalculably more complex and diverse than we tend to explain them later, and are seldom clearly manifest.

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

You will have many enemies, but even your foes will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will find your happiness in them, and will bless life and will make others bless it-which is what matters most.

In abstract love of humanity one almost always only loves oneself.

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

In the newspapers I read a biography about an American. He left his whole huge fortune to factories and for the positive sciences, his skeleton to the students at the academy there, and his skin to make a drum so as to have the American national anthem drummed on it day and night.

Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.

Of course boredom may lead you to anything. It is boredom sets one sticking golden pins into people, but all that would not matter. What is bad (this is my comment again) is that I dare say people will be thankful for the gold pins then.

Can a man possessing conciousness ever really respect himself?

Remember that you must never sell your soul. Never accept payment in advance.... Never give a work to the printer before it is finished. This is the worst thing you can do.... It constitutes the murder of your own ideas.

My friend, the truth is always implausible, did you know that? To make the truth more plausible, it's absolutely necessary to mix a bit of falsehood with it. People have always done so.

After all, bluff and real emotion exist so easily side by side.

Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.

To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.

And yet I am convinced that man will never give up true suffering- that is, destruction and chaos. Why, suffering is the sole root of consciousness.

I saw clear as daylight how strange it is that not a single person living in this mad world has had the daring to go straight for it all and send it flying to the devil! I...I wanted to have the daring...and I killed her.

Come, try, give any one of us, for instance, a little more independence, untie our hands, widen the spheres of our activity, relax the control and we...yes, I assure you...we should be begging to be under control again at once.

If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery of things.

I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness -- a real thorough-going illness.