Top 684 Quotes & Sayings by Fyodor Dostoevsky - Page 4

If God does not exist, everything is permitted.

Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference.

Everything seems stupid when it fails.

The jealous are the readiest of all to forgive, and all women know it.

Let us be servants in order to be leaders.

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.

Since I wasn't consulted at the time of the creation of the world, I reserve for myself the right to have my own opinion about it.

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.

Woe to the man who offends a small child!

A just cause is not ruined by a few mistakes.

At some thoughts one stands perplexed, especially at the sight of men's sin, and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that once for all, you may subdue the whole world.

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.

But it is possible, it is possible: the old grief, by a great mystery of human life, gradually passes into quiet, tender joy; instead of young, ebullient blood comes a mild, serene old age: I bless the sun's rising each day and my heart sings to it as before, but now I love its setting even more, its long slanting rays, and with them quiet, mild, tender memories, dear images from the whole of a long and blessed life--and over all is God's truth, moving, reconciling, all-forgiving!

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

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.

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.

For broad understanding and deep feeling, you need pain and suffering.

Grown-up people do not know that a child can give exceedingly good advice even in the most difficult case.

What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.

One must love life before loving its meaning ... yes, and when the love of life disappears, no meaning can console us.

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

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.

Men like to to count their troubles; few calculate their happiness.

Speak of a wolf and you see his tail!

I swear to you, sirs, that excessive consciousness is a disease--a genuine, absolute disease.

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.

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

For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments.

You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all.

You know, my boy, he said, it's impossible to love men such as they are. And yet we must. So try to do good to men by doing violence to your feelings, holding your nose, and shutting your eyes, especially shutting your eyes. Endure their villainy without anger, as much as possible; try to remember that you're a man too. For, if you're even a little above average intelligence, you'll have the propensity to judge people severely. Men are vile by nature and they'd rather love out of fear. Don't give in to such love: despise it always.

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.

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, 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!

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

To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well.

'Ever seen a leaf - a leaf from a tree?' 'Yes.' I saw one recently - a yellow one, a little green, wilted at the edges. Blown by the wind. When I was a little boy, I used to shut my eyes in winter and imagine a green leaf, with veins on it, and the sun shining ...' 'What's this - an allegory?' "No; why? Not an allegory - a leaf, just a leaf. A leaf is good. Everything's good.'

Every man looks out for himself, and he has the happiest life who manages to hoodwink himself best of all.

...it all, maybe, most likely, indeed, might turn out for the best.

And though I suffer for you, yet it eases my heart to suffer for you.

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.

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.

It is precisely that requirement of shared worship that has been the principal source of suffering for individual man and the human race since the beginning of history. In their efforts to impose universal worship, men have unsheathed their swords and killed one another. They have invented gods and challenged each other: "Discard your gods and worship mine or I will destroy both your gods and you!"

Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.

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.

All people seem to be divided into'ordinary'and 'extraordinary'. The ordinary people must lead a life of strict obedience and have no right to transgress the law because?theyare ordinary.Whereas the extraordinary people have the right to commit any crime they like and transgress the law in any way just because they happen to be extraordinary.

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.

I'm drunk but truthful.

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 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.

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

With love one can live even without happiness.

Life is in ourselves and not in the external.

We must never forget that human motives are generally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of another.

Dreams seem to be spurred on not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and yet what complicated tricks my reason has played sometimes in dreams.

I am crazy about mysterious things.

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.

The more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.

If you can put the question, 'Am I or am I not responsible for my acts?' then you are responsible.

I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.

We are all happy if we but knew it.