Top 100 Fyodor 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. Thus, as a result of heightened consciousness, a man feels as if it's all right if he's bad as long as he knows it- as though that were any consolation.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#3. Because I'm a Karamazov. Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I'm even pleased that I'm falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#4. 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
#5. Her gloves, as Razumihin noticed, were not merely shabby but had holes in them, and yet this evident poverty gave the two ladies an air of special dignity, which is always found in people who know how to wear poor clothes.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#6. 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.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#7. Thus a man will sometimes suffer half an hour of mortal fear with a robber, but once the knife is finally at his throat, even fear vanishes.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#8. And what if there are only spiders there, or something of that sort
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#9. How many ideas have there been in the history of man which were unthinkable ten years before they appeared?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#10. But somehow or other my intimacy with them was always strained and soon ended of itself. Once, indeed, I did have a friend. But I was
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#11. She was a diminutive, withered up old woman of sixty, with sharp malignant eyes and a sharp little nose
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#12. Here, brother, contempt is no use, even if he does despise Grushenka. He may despise her, but he still can't tear himself away from her.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#13. , 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
#14. If my arm trembles, it is because it has never been held by a pretty little hand like yours. I am a complete stranger to women; that is, I have never been used to them. You see, I am alone ... I don't even know how to talk to them.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#16. I don't understand it either. Obscure and vague, but intelligent. 'Everybody writes like that now,
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#17. [My] rheumatism has come in again"
Ivan, cynically, "The devil have rheumatism!"
"Why not, if I sometimes put on fleshly form? I put on fleshly form and I take the consequences. Satan sum et nihil humanum a me alienum puto."*
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#18. I worked it through with pride,I almost spoke without words, and i'm masterly at speaking without words.All my life I have spoken without words, and I have passed through whole tragedies on my own account without words
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#19. For though your mind is active enough, your heart is darkened with corruption, and without a pure heart there can be no full or genuine sensibility.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#20. Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#21. At home, I mainly used to read. I wished to stifle with external sensations all that was ceaselessly boiling up inside me. And among external sensations the only one possible for me was reading. Reading was, of course, a great help. It stirred, delighted, and tormented me.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. But destiny will be accomplished, and the best man will hold his ground while the undeserving one will vanish into his back-alley for ever - his filthy back-alley, his beloved back-alley, where he is at home and where he will sink in filth and stench at his own free will with enjoyment.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#26. Yes, one day perhaps the leading intellects of Russia and of Europe will study the psychology of Russian crime, for the subject is worth it. But
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#27. 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
#28. The queen who mended her stockings in prison must have looked every inch a queen and even more a queen than at sumptuous banquets and levees.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#29. But 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.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#31. I wanted to discuss the suffering of humanity in general, but perhaps we'd better confine ourselves to the sufferings of children.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#32. 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
#33. Love the animals: God gave them the rudiments of thought and an untroubled joy.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#34. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness - a real thorough-going illness.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#35. 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.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#37. 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
#38. There is an untroubled harmony in everything, a full consonance in nature; only in our illusory freedom do we feel at variance with it.
Fyodor Tyutchev
#39. I am a ridiculous man. They call me a madman now. That would be a distinct rise in my social position were it not that they still regard me as being as ridiculous as ever.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#40. But twice-two-makes-four is for all that a most insupportable thing. Twice-two-makes-four is, in my humble opinion, nothing but a piece of impudence. Twice-two-makes-four is a farcical, dressed-up fellow who stands across your path with arms akimbo and spits at you.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#41. 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
#43. People of the middle sort like us, thinking people that is, are always tongue-tied and awkward. What is the reason of it? Whether it is the lack of public interest, or whether it is we are so honest we don't want to deceive one another.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#44. Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing like it.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#45. You must not be angry with me for having been so sad yesterday; I was very happy, very content, but in my very best moments I am always for some reason sad.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#46. Accept suffering and redeem yourself by it, that's what you must do.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#47. 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
#48. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#50. I think I must be one of those who are born to be in luck, for one does not often meet with people whom one feels he can love from the first sight of their faces
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#51. I, for instance, have a great deal of AMOUR PROPRE. I am as suspicious and prone to take offence as a humpback or a dwarf.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#53. 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.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#54. If [God] doesn't exist, man is the chief of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#55. The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#57. A strange idea was pecking at his brain like a chicken in the egg, and very, very much absorbed him.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#58. 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
#59. Avoid contempt, both of others and of yourself: what seems bad to you in yourself is purified by the very fact that you have noticed it in yourself.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#60. So it is that we are unhappy we sense more acutely the unhappiness of others; rather than dispersing, the emotion becomes focused ...
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#61. Fierce and solitary he awaited death, mistrustful and hostile to all
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#63. I swear to you that to think too much is a disease, a real, actual disease.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#65. She understood from it all what a woman, if she loves sincerely, always understands before anything else
namely, that I myself was unhappy.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#66. I used to imagine adventures for myself, I invented a life, so that I could at least exist somehow.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#67. For if there's no everlasting God, there's no such thing as virtue, and there's no need of it.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#68. People are more persuaded than ever that they have perfect freedom, yet they have brought their freedom to us and laid it humbly at our feet.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#69. His wife, however, happened to be the only woman in his life who failed totally to arouse any passion in him whatsoever.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#70. A fool is always pleased with what he says, and, besides, he always says more than he needs to.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#71. 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 .
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#72. It is a law of nature that every decent man on earth is bound to be a coward and a slave
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#73. In order to love simply, it is necessary to know how to show love.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#74. Confinement, regulation, and excessive work have no effect but to develop in these men profound hatred, a thirst for forbidden enjoyment, and frightful recalcitration.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#75. With tears of penitence and poignant, tender anguish, he will exclaim: 'Others are better than I, they wanted to save me, not to ruin me!' Oh, this act of mercy is so easy for you, for in the absence of anything like real evidence it will be too awful for you to pronounce: 'Yes, he is guilty.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#76. There were rats in it, but Fyodor Pavlovich was not altogether angry with them:
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#78. I got entangled in my own data, and my conclusion directly contradicts the original idea from which I start. Starting from unlimited freedom, I conclude with unlimited despotism. I will add, however, that apart from my solution of the social formula, there can be no other.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#79. I've been waiting all my life for some one like you, I knew that some one like you would come and forgive me. I believed that, nasty as I am, some one would really love me, not only with a shameful love!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#81. Christ is with you. Do not abandon Him and He will not abandon you. You will see great sorrow, and in that sorrow you will be happy. This is my last message to you: in sorrow seek happiness. Work, work unceasingly.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#83. Anger was buried far too early in a young heart, which perhaps contained much good.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#84. I'm sorry this letter is so long. I didn't have time to make it shorter.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#85. Fixing a hole is far more effective than trying to hide it. That approach is also less stressful than constantly worrying that attackers may find the vulnerabilities.
Gordon Fyodor Lyon
#86. Listen, Kolya, by the way, you are going to be a very unhappy man in your life ... But on the whole you will bless life all the same.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#87. She thinks she can overcome everything, that everything will give way to her.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#89. Through the inscrutable decrees of Providence everything has its recompense, and a visible calamity sometimes brings with it a great, if invisible, profit.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#90. Good-bye, till we meet then
I embrace you warmly, warmly, with many kisses. Yours till death,
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#91. All our ladies were besotted with the new visitor. They divided sharply into two camps: one adored him, while the other hated him with a vengeance; but both were besotted nonetheless.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#92. Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it - that is what you must do.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#94. And the peasants would beat them so cruelly, sometimes even about the nose and eyes, and he felt so sorry, so sorry for them that he almost cried, and his mother always used to take him away from the window.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#95. A murder by sentence is far more dreadful than a murder committed by a criminal.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#96. Towards the end of his life he became a Liberal of the type common in the forties and fifties.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#98. Well, then, eliminate the people, curtail them, force them to be silent. Because the European Enlightenment is more important than people.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#99. Maybe man does not love well-being only? Maybe he loves suffering just as much? Maybe suffering is just as profitable for him as well-being? For man sometimes loves suffering terribly much, to the point of passion, and that is a fact.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#100. So he tortured himself, fretting himself with such questions, and finding a kind of enjoyment in it.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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