Top 100 Quotes About Fyodor Dostoevsky
#1. Certainly, my exposure in high school to writers like Flannery O'Connor, Shusaku Endo, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Graham Greene was formative.
Phil Klay
#2. You see, reason, gentlemen, is a fine thing, that is unquestionable, but reason is only reason and satisfies only man's reasoning capacity, while wanting is a manifestation of the whole of life. Fyodor Dostoevsky
Richard Flanagan
#3. 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
#4. How many ideas have there been in the history of man which were unthinkable ten years before they appeared?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#7. I wanted to discuss the suffering of humanity in general, but perhaps we'd better confine ourselves to the sufferings of children.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#8. 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
#9. In order to love simply, it is necessary to know how to show love.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#10. Anger was buried far too early in a young heart, which perhaps contained much good.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#11. Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it - that is what you must do.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#12. Paradise is hidden in each one of use, it is concealed within me too, right now, and if I wish, it will come for me in reality, tomorrow even, and for the rest of my life.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#13. I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared. And it was after that that I found out the truth . I learnt the truth last November on the third of November, to be precise and I remember every instant since.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#15. 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.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#16. When he has lost all hope, all object in life, man becomes a monster in his misery.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#18. 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.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#19. 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.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#20. 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.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#21. 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.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#22. My soul bleeds and the blood steadily, silently, disturbingly slowly, swallows me whole.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#23. 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 ...
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#25. I believe there is no one deeper, lovelier, more sympathetic and more perfect than Jesus ...
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#27. If man has one good memory to go by, that may be enough to save him.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#28. Human laziness makes people pigeonhole one another at first site so that they find nothing in common with one another.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#29. Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea. And there is only one higher idea on earth, and it is the idea of the immortality of the human soul, for all other "higher" ideas of life by which humans might live derive from that idea alone.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#30. He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animated abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarize it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#31. The reasoning is classic in its clarity. If God does not exist, Kirilov is god. If God does not exist, Kirilov must kill himself. Kirilov must therefore kill himself to become god. That logic is absurd, but it is what is needed.
Albert Camus
#32. What is hell? ... The suffering that comes from the consciousness that one is no longer able to love.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#33. And even though we may be involved with the most important affairs, achieve distinction or fall into some great misfortune- all the same, let us never forget how good we all once felt here, all together, united by such good and kind feelings as made us, too, ... perhaps better than we actually are.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#36. Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#37. Perhaps a normal man is supposed to be stupid-how do we know? Perhaps it's even very beautiful.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#39. In a way there's only a fine shade of difference between the healthy and the deranged.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#40. Everywhere I am the object of an unbelievable esteem, the interest in me is, quite simply, tremendous.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#42. Talking nonsense is man's only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#43. And it has always been a mystery, and I've marveled a thousand times at this ability of man (and, it seems, of the Russian man above all) to cherish the highest ideal in his soul alongside the greatest baseness, and all that in perfect sincerity.
The Adolescent (or, The Raw Youth)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#44. I never have frustrations. The reason is to wit: Of at first I don't succeed, I quit!
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#45. But try getting blindly carried away by your feelings, without reasoning, without a primary cause, driving consciousness away at least for a time; start hating, or fall in love, only so as not to sit with folded arms.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#46. Even if we are occupied with important things and even if we attain honour or fall into misfortune, still let us remember how good it once was here, when we were all together united by a good and kind feeling which made us perhaps better than we are.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#47. Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing. Loving all, you will perceive the mystery of God in all.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#48. Every member of the society spies on the rest, and it is his duty to inform against them. All are slaves and equal in their slavery ... The great thing about it is equality ... Slaves are bound to be equal.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#51. What you need more than anything in life is a definite position.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#52. The jealous are the readiest of all to forgive, and all women know it.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#54. Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#55. It's a burden to us even to be human beings-men with our own real body and blood; we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalized man.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#56. Let us first fulfill Christ's injunction ourselves and only then venture to expect it of our children. Otherwise we are not fathers, but enemies of our children, and they are not our children, but our enemies, and we have made them our enemies ourselves.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#57. I have been tortured with longing to believe ... and the yearning grows stronger the more cogent the intellectual difficulties stand in the way.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#58. Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#59. Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#60. Can a man possessing conciousness ever really respect himself?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#62. As for me, this is my story: I worked and was tortured. You know what it means to compose? No, thank God, you do not! I believe you have never written to order, by the yard, and have never experienced that hellish torture.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#66. And in fact I've noticed that faith always seems to be less in the daytime
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#68. There is nothing easier than lopping off heads and nothing harder than developing ideas.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#69. In abstract love of humanity one almost always only loves oneself.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#70. Something was not dead within me, in the depths of my heart and conscience it would not die, and it showed itself in acute depression.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#71. Yes, that's right ... love should come before logic ... Only then will man come to understand the meaning of life.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#72. If thou love each thing thou wilt perceive the mystery of God in all.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#73. If you love all things, you will also attain the divine mystery that is in all things. For then your ability to perceive the truth will grow every day, and your mind will open itself to an all-embracing love
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#74. 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.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#76. That's always the way with fanatics; they cross themselves at the tavern and throw stones at the temple.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#77. 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.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#80. For broad understanding and deep feeling, you need pain and suffering.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#81. One could never judge a man without seeing him close, for oneself ...
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#83. To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#85. Psychology lures even most serious people into romancing, and quite unconsciously.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#86. The degree of a nation's civilization can be seen in the way it treats its prisoners
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#87. To love another person is to see them as God intended them to be.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#88. A true friend of mankind whose heart has but once quivered in compassion over the sufferings of the people, will understand and forgive all the impassable alluvial filth in which they are submerged, and will be able to discover the diamonds in the filth.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#89. Until you have become really, in actual fact, as brother to everyone, brotherhood will not come to pass.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#90. 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.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#91. A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#92. My feelings, gratitude, for instance, are denied me simply because of my social position.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#93. If you can put the question, 'Am I or am I not responsible for my acts?' then you are responsible.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#94. A man would still do something out of sheer perversity - he would create destruction and chaos - just to gain his point ... and if all this could in turn be analyzed and prevented by predicting that it would occur, then man would deliberately go mad to prove his point.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#95. I am strongly convinced that not only too much consciousness but even any consciousness at all is a sickness.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#96. Nothing is more seductive for a man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#98. Every blade of grass, every insect, ant, and golden bee, all so amazingly know their path, though they have not intelligence, they bear witness to the mystery of God and continually accomplish it themselves.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#99. A widow, the mother of a family, and from her heart she produces chords to which my whole being responds.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#100. To be acutely conscious is a disease, a real, honest-to-goodness disease.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
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