Top 100 Dostoyevsky's Quotes
#1. This is not the proper place to begin speaking of this new passion of Ivan Fyodorovich's, which later affected his whole life: it could all serve as the plot for another story, for a different novel, which I do not even know that I shall ever undertake.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#2. It was like a dream in which one is being pursued, nearly caught and will be killed, and is rooted to the spot and cannot even move one's arms.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#3. , and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometimes be the means of saving us.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#4. 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.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#5. Oh, I wish so much to live again! Each minute, each instant of life should be blessedness for man ... they should, surely they should! It is man's own duty to arrange it so; it is his law
a hidden but surely existing one ...
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#6. With love everything is bought, everything is saved. If even I, a sinful man, just like you, was moved to tenderness and felt pity for you, how much more will God be. 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.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#7. Why does my action strike them as so horrible? Is it because it was a crime? What is meant by crime? My conscience is at rest. Of course, it was a legal crime, of course, the letter of the law was broken and blood was shed. Well, punish me for the letter of the law ... and that's enough.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#8. And yet how simple it is: in one day, in one hour everything could be arranged at once! The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that's the chief thing, and that's everything; nothing else is wanted - you will find out at once how to arrange it all.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#9. For the secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for. Without a stable conception of the object of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather destroy himself than remain on earth, though he had bread in abundance.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#10. Accept suffering and redeem yourself by it, that's what you must do.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#11. Actually on the point of tears, though I knew perfectly well at that moment that all this was out of Pushkin's Silvio and Lermontov's Masquerade.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#13. It is almost better to tell your own lies than somebody else's truth; in the first case you are a man, in the second you are no better than a parrot!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#14. For if there's no everlasting God, there's no such thing as virtue, and there's no need of it.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#15. If anything protects society even in our time, and even reforms the criminal himself and transforms him into a different person, again it is Christ's law alone, which manifests itself in the acknowledgement of one's own conscience.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#16. 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.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#17. Paper, they say, does not blush, but I assure you that it's not true and that it's blushing now just as I am blushing all over.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#18. We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what if it's one little room, like a bath house in the country, black and grimy and spiders in every corner. and that's all eternity is? I sometimes fancy it like that.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#20. Anyone who can appease a man's conscience can take his freedom away from him.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#21. It is man's unique privilege, among all other organisms. By pursuing falsehood you will arrive at the truth!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#22. Hm ... yes, all is in a man's hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that's an axiom
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#23. The brutes imagine they are doing me an honour in letting me sit down with them. They don't understand that it's an honour to them not to me!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#24. Nor is there any embarrassment in the fact that we're ridiculous, isn't that true? For it's actually so, we are ridiculous, light-minded, with bad habits, we're bored, we don't know how to look, how to understand, we're all like that, all, you, and I, and they
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#25. Surely they must have spent years hand in hand together - alone the two of them, casting off all the world and each uniting his or her life with the other's?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#26. There are cases when one may sometimes burn one's ships and not go home again. Life does not consist only of lunches and dinners and prince S's.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#27. there is a limit of ignominy, beyond which man's consciousness of shame cannot go, and after which begins satisfaction in shame?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#28. And even if one tried, it would be very hard to give a true account, for there were no thoughts in Ivan's mind but something very vague. He felt that he had lost his bearings.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#29. Karamazov, we love you! a voice, which seemed to be Kartashov's, exclaimed irrepressibly.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#30. I don't need you to tell me I'm not well, though I don't really know what's wrong with me; I think I'm five times healthier than you are.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#31. And why do you ask what can't be answered? What's the use of such foolish questions? How could it depend on my decision? Who has made me the judge to decide who ought to live and out ought not to live?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#32. illustrated magazine: Nekrasov, 'the people's poet' (see note 15), was a contributor to Spark, an illustrated satirical journal published in Petersburg from 1859 to 1873.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#33. A novel requires a hero, and here there's a deliberate collection of all the traits for an anti-hero
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#34. Very well, then there's an experiment, and the thing is proved; one cannot live and count each moment; say what you like, but one cannot.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#35. Trifles, trifles are what matter! Why, it's just such trifles that always ruin everything ... .
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#36. It is different with the upper classes. They, following science, want to base justice on reason alone, but not with Christ, as before, and they have already proclaimed that there is no crime, that there is no sin. And that's consistent, for if you have no God what is the meaning of crime?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#37. What matters," said the prince at last, "is that you have a child's trusting nature and extraordinary truthfulness. Do you know that a great deal can be forgiven you for that alone?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#38. But wait, wait," Ivan was laughing, "don't get so excited. A fantasy, you say? Let it be. Of course it's a fantasy. But still, let me ask: do you really think that this whole Catholic movement of the past few centuries is really nothing but the lust for power only for the sake of filthy lucre?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#40. For God's sake, even her parents no longer read Dostoyevsky--haven't they suffered enough, they would say; after thirty years of communism, didn't they DESERVE Danielle Steele?
Irina Reyn
#41. 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.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#42. 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
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#43. In my opinion, Christ's love for people is in its kind a miracle impossible on earth. True, he was God. But we are not gods.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#44. As a piece of literacy criticism, Freud's best writing is about Dostoyevsky. It's a kind of displaced literacy criticism.
Dennis Potter
#45. Voltaire's Si Dieu n'existait pas , il faudrait l'inventer ("If God did not exist, he would have to be invented").
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#46. It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#47. Oh, he understood very well that for the meek soul of a simple Russian, exhausted by grief and hardship and, above all, by constant injustice and sin, his own or the world's, there was no stronger need than to find a holy shrine or a saint to prostrate himself before and to worship.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#49. 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.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#52. A complete lack of personality,1 that's what they're after, that's what excites them! Anything so as not to be themselves, not to resemble themselves! For them, that's the very height of progress. I
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#53. Break what must be broken, once for all, that's all, and take the suffering on oneself.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#54. Good Lord, only a moment of bliss? Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of a man's life?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#55. Ah youth, youth! That's what happens when you go steeping your soul into Shakespeare
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#56. I don't think anybody says to Coetzee or Dostoyevsky or Kafka, "Your characters aren't likeable." It's not about your character winning a popularity contest. That's not the writer's job.
Lynne Tillman
#57. They say the sun brings life to the universe. The sun will rise and
look at it. Isn't it dead? Everything is dead. Dead men are everywhere. There are only people in the world, and all around them is silence
that's what the earth is.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#58. If he's alive he has everything in his power! Whose fault is it he doesn't understand that
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#59. Still, if there was anything, it came about by no one else's power save the divine will. Everything is from God.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#60. Everything is dead, the dead are everywhere. There are only people, and all around them is silence - that's the earth.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#61. She'll come, if not today, then tomorrow, but she'll find me. That's the cursed romanticism of all these pure hearts! Oh the vileness, oh the stupidity, oh the narrowness, of these rotten, sentimental souls
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#62. FYODOR MIKHAYLOVICH DOSTOYEVSKY was born in Moscow in 1821, the second of a physician's seven children. When
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#63. It's in despair that you find the sharpest pleasures, particularly when you are most acutely aware of the hopelessness of your position.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#64. He seemed to be very dark-haired, lean, and swarthy; his eyes were large, undoubtedly black, very shiny, and had a yellow cast, like a Gypsy's - that could be guessed even in the dark. He must have been about forty, and was not drunk.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#65. Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God's help I attain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#66. And all this, all this abroad, all this Europe of yours, it's all just a fantasy, and all of us, while we're abroad, are just a fantasy ... mark my words, you'll see for yourself!' she concluded, almost angrily, as she parted from Yevgeny Pavlovich.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#67. 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.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#68. 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!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#69. But in the end I'd marry her to the one she herself loved. To a father, the man his daughter falls in love with herself always seems the worst. That's how it is.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#70. Well, suppose intelligent people don't believe, but that's from intelligence, and you, I say, squirt that you are, what do you understand about God? You were taught by some student, and if he'd taught you to light icon lamps, you'd do it.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#71. Life is given to me only once, and never will be again - I don't want to sit waiting for universal happiness. I want to live myself; otherwise it's better not to live at all.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#72. 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.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#73. But gentlemen, what sort of free choice will there be when it comes down to tables and arithmetic, when all that's left is two times two makes four? Two times two makes four even without my will. Is that what you call free choice?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#74. It's your rich life," Alyosha said softly. "Why, is it better to be poor?" "Yes, it is.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#75. He doesn't have so much learning ... or any special education either; he's silent, and he grins at you silently
that's how he gets by.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#76. It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#77. Take an act of magnanimity that is difficult, quiet, muted, without splendour, where you're slandered, where there's much sacrifice and not a drop of glory.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#78. [The Devil] Mephistopheles, when he comes to Faust, testifies of himself that he desires evil, yet does only good. Well, let him do as he likes, it's quite the opposite with me. I am perhaps the only man in all of nature who loves the truth and sincerely desires good.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#79. Let someone who was not from among the convicts try reproaching a prisoner for his crime and abusing him (though it's not in the Russian spirit to reproach a criminal)
there would be no end of cursing.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#80. Well, it's not a disaster, is it? Man, too, comes to his end, and here we are making a fuss about a clay pot!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#81. One day is enough for a man to know all happiness. My dear ones, why do we quarrel, try to outshine each other and keep grudges against each other? Let's go straight into the garden, walk and play there, love, appreciate each other and glorify life.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#82. Whoever infringes upon individual 'charity' infringes upon man's nature and scorns his personal dignity
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#84. Anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I've been writing this story; so it's hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#85. There is one other book, that can teach you everything you need to know about life ... it's The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but that's not enough anymore.
Kurt Vonnegut
#86. Poverty's no sin, we mustn't omit to point that out.' This also turned out to be true: the fair-haired young man admitted it at once, and with unexpected haste.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#87. How easily the heart accustoms itself to comforts, and how difficult it is to tear one's self away from luxuries which have become habitual and, little by little, indispensable.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#88. And so - if it's shame, let it be shame, if it's disgrace, let it be disgrace, if it's degradation, let it be degradation, and the worse, the better - that's what I chose.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#89. Man's nature acts as one whole, with everything that is in it, conscious or unconscious.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#90. A percentage! What splendid words they have; they are so scientific, so consolatory ... Once you've said 'percentage' there's nothing more to worry about. If we had any other word ... maybe we might feel more uneasy ...
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#91. There is a great and unresolved thought in him. He's one of those who don't need millions, but need to resolve their thought.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#92. One life passed, another began, then that passed and a third began, and there's still no end. All the ends are cut off as if with a pair of scissors.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#93. In despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one's position.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#94. It's because I chatter that I do nothing. Or perhaps it is that I chatter because I do nothing.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#95. Such power!" Adelaida cried all at once, peering greedily at the portrait over her sister's shoulder.
"Where? What power?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna asked sharply.
"Such beauty has power," Adelaida said hotly. "You can overturn the world with such beauty.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#96. Full freedom will come only when it makes no difference whether to live or not to live. That's the goal for everyone.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#97. The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#98. 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.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#99. A long while yet will you keep that great mother's grief. But it will turn in the end into quiet joy, and your bitter tears will be only tears of tender sorrow that purifies the heart and delivers it from sin.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#100. I love it when people lie! Lying is only man's privilege over all other organisms. Lying is what makes me a man.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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