Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. His most acclaimed novels include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880).
Numerous literary critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces.
Here is A selection of some of Fyodor Dostoevsky most famous quotes: Dostoevsky Quotes About Life, Love & Happiness and Society, Loneliness. Dostoevsky on Intelligence.
Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes and Sayings
To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.
Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.
What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
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.
I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.
I love mankind, he said, but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.
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.
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.
The soul is healed by being with children.
People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.
Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human.
It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.
But how could you live and have no story to tell?
The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.
Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
To love someone means to see them as God intended them.
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.
The world says: "You have needs - satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.
Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.
Right or wrong, it's very pleasant to break something from time to time.
Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering...
I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there - that is living.
If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.
The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.
You can be sincere and still be stupid.
Beauty will save the world.
Don't let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.
It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them — the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.
Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.
To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.
I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.
This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness.
It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.
Besides, nowadays, almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.
Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.
If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.
Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.
When reason fails, the devil helps!
Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.
The more stupid one is, the closer one is to reality. The more stupid one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence squirms and hides itself. Intelligence is unprincipled, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.
I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.
My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?
If you want to overcome the whole world, overcome yourself.
You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.
The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.
Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference.
A hundred suspicions don't make a proof.
I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can't help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year.
A beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel.
I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.
The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.
And the more I drink the more I feel it. That's why I drink too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in drink... I drink so that I may suffer twice as much!
The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.
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.
Grown-up people do not know that a child can give exceedingly good advice even in the most difficult case.
The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.
Destroy my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I will follow you.
Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it... one must have the courage to dare.
I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and we're both unhappy, and we both suffer.
Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!
Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
I used to imagine adventures for myself, I invented a life, so that I could at least exist somehow.
Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education.
A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.
Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice.
Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!
Truly great men must, I think, experience great sorrow on the earth.
I don't know how to be silent when my heart is speaking.
There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.
They were like two enemies in love with one another.
People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily so, in fact.
Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.
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.
Break what must be broken, once for all, that's all, and take the suffering on oneself.
It's life that matters, nothing but life - the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.
You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won't be wiser?
Forgive me... for my love - for ruining you with my love.
I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness - a real thorough-going illness.
One can fall in love and still hate.
Don't be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don't be afraid - the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again.
Love children especially, for they too are sinless like the angels; they live to soften and purify our hearts and, as it were, to guide us.
It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.
What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?
Love a man, even in his sin, for that love is a likeness of the divine love, and is the summit of love on earth.
To think too much is a disease.
Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom.
How can a man of consciousness have the slightest respect for himself.
It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young, dear reader.
I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind.
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.
Compassion is the chief law of human existence.
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.
But I always liked side - paths, little dark back - alleys behind the main road - there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt.
But to fall in love does not mean to love. One can fall in love and still hate.
Love life more than the meaning of it?
Life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we refuse to see it.
Oh, how unbearable is a happy person sometimes!
I've never been a coward at heart, although I've always been a coward in action
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.
Sorrow compressed my heart, and I felt I would die, and then... Well, then I woke up.
An intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything.
I almost do not exist now and I know it; God knows what lives in me in place of me.
I want to suffer so that I may love.
If he's honest, he'll steal; if he's human, he'll murder; if he's faithful, he'll deceive.
I like revisiting, at certain times, spots where I was once happy; I like to shape the present in the image of the irretrievable past.
But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself.
I utter what you would not dare think.
I believe the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.
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.
Everything passes, only truth remains.
Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.
Of course my jokes are in poor taste, inappropriate, and confused; they reveal my lack of security. But that is because I have no respect for myself.
In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we.
Compassion was the most important, perhaps the sole law of human existence.
Be the sun and all will see you.
It is amazing what one ray of sunshine can do for a man!
They were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other.
In sinning, each man sins against all, and each man is at least partly guilty for another's sin. There is no isolated sin.
The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.
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.
Reason is the slave of passion.
I punish myself for my whole life, my whole life I punish.
The prince says that the world will be saved by beauty! And I maintain that the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love.
I am too young and I've loved you too much.
I have so much to say to you that I am afraid I shall tell you nothing.
I'm a master of speaking silently—all my life I've spoken silently and I've lived through entire tragedies in silence.
Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.
Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.
To live without Hope is to Cease to live.
I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.
Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.
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.
Only through suffering can we find ourselves.
The more you succeed in loving, the more you'll be convinced at the existence of God and the immortality of your soul.
A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.
There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.
Neither man nor nation can exist without a sublime idea.
Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being.
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