Top 684 Quotes & Sayings by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Last updated on November 25, 2024.
The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.
Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.
Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!
Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.
The formula 'Two and two make five' is not without its attractions.
A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.
Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.
One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man's laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.
Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.
The soul is healed by being with children.
Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.
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.
Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.
Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.
Realists do not fear the results of their study.
Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.
To live without Hope is to Cease to live.
There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.
It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.
Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.
If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.
The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.
If there is no God, everything is permitted.
To love someone means to see him as God intended him.
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.
It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?
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.
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.
Nature doesn't ask your permission; it doesn't care about your wishes, or whether you like its laws or not. You're obliged to accept it as it is, and consequently all its results as well.
Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice.
Humanity can live without science, it can live without bread, but it cannot live without beauty. Without beauty, there would be nothing left to do in this life. Here the secret lies. Here lies the entire story.
The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.
Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!
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.
If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery of things.
If everything on earth were rational, nothing would happen.
To love another person is to see them as God intended them to be.
Totally without hope one cannot live. To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that above the entrance to Dante's hell is the inscription: "Leave behind all hope, you who enter here."
I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.
Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.
When I look back on my past and think how much time I wasted on nothing, how much time has been lost in futilities, errors, laziness, incapacity to live; how little I appreciated it, how many times I sinned against my heart and soul-then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness.
The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.
Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.
He who masters the grey everyday is a hero.
To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.
A hundred suspicions don't make a proof.
It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.
Only the heart knows how to find what is precious.
A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.
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.
The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!
It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.
It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them — the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.
What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all. If a man carries many such memories into life with him, he is saved for the rest of his days. And even if only one good memory is left in our hearts, it may also be the instrument of our salvation one day.
But how could you live and have no story to tell?
A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And it all comes from lying - lying to others and to yourself.
The more incompetent one feels, the more eager he is to fight.
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.
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