Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes & Sayings

Atheism: It seeks to replace in itself the moral power of religion, in order to appease the spiritual thirst of parched humanity and save it; not by Christ, but by force. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Men like to to count their troubles; few calculate their happiness. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

The absurd is only too necessary on earth. The world stands on absurdities. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Perhaps a normal man is supposed to be stupid-how do we know? Perhaps it's even very beautiful. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

The more you succeed in loving, the more you'll be convinced at the existence of God and the immortality of your soul. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

Taking a new step ... is what people fear most. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

What you need more than anything in life is a definite position. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

To love someone means to see him as God intended him. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

When he has lost all hope, all object in life, man becomes a monster in his misery. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

There is nothing easier than lopping off heads and nothing harder than developing ideas. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

Sometimes we desire absolute nonsense because in our stupidity we see in this nonsense the easiest way of attaining some conjectural good. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

The greater the stupidity, the greater the clarity. Stupidity is brief and guileless, while wit equivocates and hides. Wit is a scoundrel, while stupidity is honest and sincere. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

What tender and devoted mother wouldn't be dismayed and ill with terror at her son's or daughter's stepping even one hair's breath off the beaten track. No, better let him be happy and live in comfort without originality, is what every mother thinks when she rocks the cradle. The only person among us who can fail to reach the general's rank is the original man - in other words, the man who won't be quiet. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

It's in the homes of spiteful old widows that one finds such cleanliness. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Wealth is the number of things one can do without. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

To begin with unlimited freedom is to end with unlimited despotism. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Gambling is a most foolish and imprudent pursuit. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

I never have frustrations. The reason is to wit: Of at first I don't succeed, I quit! — Fyodor Dostoevsky

There were moments when I hated everybody I came across, innocent or guilty, and looked at them as thieves who were robbing me of my life with impunity. The most unbearable misfortune is when you yourself become unjust, malignant, vile; you realize it, you even reproach yourself - but you just can't help it. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

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

I am strongly convinced that not only too much consciousness but even any consciousness at all is a sickness. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

I wanted to discuss the suffering of humanity in general, but perhaps we'd better confine ourselves to the sufferings of children. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Make us your slaves, but feed us. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

There is not a thing that is more positive than bread. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Man is a creative animal, doomed to strive toward a goal, engaged in full-time engineering. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

One could never judge a man without seeing him close, for oneself ... — Fyodor Dostoevsky

A single day is sufficient for a man to discover what happiness is. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

If man has one good memory to go by, that may be enough to save him. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Love animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, don't harrass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you - alas, it is true of almost every one of us! — Fyodor Dostoevsky

If there is no God, then I am God. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

Nothing is more seductive for a man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them - the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

If God does not exist, then everything is permissible. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

My feelings, gratitude, for instance, are denied me simply because of my social position. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Only through suffering can we find ourselves. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

There are three forces, the only three forces capable of conquering and enslaving forever the conscience of these weak rebels in the interests of their own happiness. They are: the miracle, the mystery and authority. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Remember that you must never sell your soul. Never accept payment in advance ... Never give a work to the printer before it is finished. This is the worst thing you can do ... It constitutes the murder of your own ideas. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

My soul bleeds and the blood steadily, silently, disturbingly slowly, swallows me whole. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

He who masters the grey everyday is a hero. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

In a way there's only a fine shade of difference between the healthy and the deranged. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Who doesn't desire his fathers death? — Fyodor Dostoevsky

I am crazy about mysterious things. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

If there were no God, he would have to be invented. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

A widow, the mother of a family, and from her heart she produces chords to which my whole being responds. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Russia was a slave in Europe but would be a master in Asia. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

At that point I ought to have gone away, but a strange sensation rose up in me, a sort of defiance of fate, a desire to challenge it, to put out my tongue at it. I laid down the largest stake allowe-four thousand gulden-and lost it. Then, getting hot, I pulled out all I had left, staked it on the same number, and lost again, after which I walked away from the table as though I were stunned. I could not even grasp what had happened to me. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Trifles, trifles are what matter! — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

Hold your tongue; you won't understand anything. If there is no God, then I am God. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

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

The consciousness of life is higher than life. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

I do not wish you much happiness
it would bore you; I do not wish you trouble either; but, following the people's philosophy, I will simply repeat: 'Live more' and try somehow not to be too bored; this useless wish I am adding on my own. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

I am a sick man ... I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts. However, i don't know a fig about my sickness, and am not sure what it is that hurts me. I am not being treated and never have been, though I respect medicine. What's more, I am also superstitious in the extreme; well, at least enough to respect medicine. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it - that is what you must do. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

The more incompetent one feels, the more eager he is to fight. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

I cannot truly imagine a truly great person who hasn't suffered. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

We are born dead, and we are becoming more and more contented with our condition. We are acquiring the taste for it. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Everywhere I am the object of an unbelievable esteem, the interest in me is, quite simply, tremendous. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Every man needs a place to go to. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Above all, do not lie to yourself. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

He who desires to see the living God face-to-face should not seek him in the empty, firmament of his mind, but in human love. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Of course I shall go astray often ... for who does not make mistakes? But I cannot go far wrong for I have seen the truth. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

How many ideas have there been in the history of man which were unthinkable ten years before they appeared? — Fyodor Dostoevsky

I have seen the truth. It is not as though I had invented it in my mind. I have seen it, SEEN IT and the living image of it has filled my soul forever ... — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery of things. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Even as I approach the gambling hall, as soon as I hear, two rooms away, the jingle of money poured out on the table, I almost go into convulsions. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

On our earth we can only love withsuffering and through suffering. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

Sometimes a man is intensely, even passionately, attached to suffering - that is a fact. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

If it were considered desirable to destroy a human being, the only thing necessary would be to give his work a character of uselessness — Fyodor Dostoevsky

I almost do not exist now and I know it; God knows what lives in me in place of me. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

Man has not the right to turn aside and heed not what is happening in the world around him, and this I maintain on moral grounds of the highest order. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

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

The Golden Age is the most implausible of all dreams. But for it men have given up their life and strength; for the sake of it prophets have died and been slain; without it the people will not live and cannot die. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

To be acutely conscious is a disease, a real, honest-to-goodness disease. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

If thou love each thing thou wilt perceive the mystery of God in all. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

To cook your hare you must first catch it. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

From a hundred rabbits you can't make a horse. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Yes, that's right ... love should come before logic ... Only then will man come to understand the meaning of life. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

An anguish of longing would boil up inside me; a hysterical thirst for contradictions and contrasts would appear, and I would embark on dissipations. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

And it is so simple ... The one thing is - love thy neighbor as thyself - that is the one thing. That is all, nothing else is needed. You will instantly find how to live. — Fyodor Dostoevsky