F M Dostoevsky Quotes & Sayings

What is hell? ... The suffering that comes from the consciousness that one is no longer able to love. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

There is no idea, no fact, which could not be vulgarized and presented in a ludicrous light. — 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

Power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare! — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Sincere and unspiteful laughter is mirth, but where is there any mirth in our time, and do people know how to be mirthful? ... A man's mirth is a feature that gives away the whole man, from head to foot. Someone's character won't be cracked for a long time then the man bursts out laughing somehow quite sincerely, and his whole character suddenly opens up as if on the flat of your hand. Only a man of the loftiest and happiest development knows how to be mirthful infectiously, that is, irresistibly and goodheartedly. I'm not speaking of his mental development, but of his character, of the whole man. And so, if you want to discern a man and know his soul, you must look, not at how he keeps silent, or how he speaks, or how we weeps, or even how he is stirred by the noblest ideas, but you had better look at him when he laughs. If a man has a good laugh, it means he's a good man. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

If the people around you are spiteful and callous and will not hear you, fall down before them and beg their forgiveness; for in truth you are to blame for their not wanting to hear you. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Money is coined liberty. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Dostoyevsky described hell as perhaps nothing more than a room with a chair in it. This room has several chairs. A young man sits in one. — Bruce Robinson

In actual fact, the utterly incompatible elements comprising Dostoevsky's material are distributed among several worlds and several autonomous consciousnesses; they are presented not within a single field of vision but within several fields of vision, each full and of equal worth; and it is not the material directly but these worlds, their consciousnesses with their individual fields of vision that combine in a higher unity, a unity, so to speak, of the second order, the unity of a polyphonic novel. — Mikhail Bakhtin

In Dostoevsky, two thoughts are already two people, for there are no thoughts belonging to no one and every thought represents an entire person. This — Mikhail Bakhtin

Is it really not possible to touch the gaming table without being instantly infected by superstition? — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

There is no object on earth which cannot be looked at from a cosmic point of view. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

I am crazy about mysterious things. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

" You think I am attacking them for talking nonsense? Not a bit! I like them to talk nonsense. That's man's one privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth." --Crime and punishment, F. Dostoevsky — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

This story ["The Depressed Person"] was the most painful thing I ever wrote. It's about narcissism, which is a part of depression. The character has traits of myself. I really lost friends while writing on that story, I became ugly and unhappy and just yelled at people. The cruel thing with depression is that it's such a self-centered illness - Dostoevsky shows that pretty good in his "Notes from Underground". The depression is painful, you're sapped/consumed by yourself; the worse the depression, the more you just think about yourself and the stranger and repellent you appear to others. — David Foster Wallace

If you look at the literature of the 19th century, you get things like Kafka and Dostoevsky, who basically write about feeling bored and alienated. That's because we lost contact with the important things in life like work that you enjoy, or the garden, nature, your family and friends. — Tom Hodgkinson

The man who is happy is fulfilling the purpose of existence — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

Chernobyl is a theme worthy of Dostoevsky, an attempt to justify mankind. — Svetlana Alexievich

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

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

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

The degree of a nation's civilization can be seen in the way it treats its prisoners — Fyodor Dostoevsky

In none of Dostoevsky's novels is there any evolution of a unified spirit; in fact there is no evolution, no growth in general, — Mikhail Bakhtin

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

Dostoevsky's visible world was a world of sensationalism. He may in the last analysis be a great mystic or a great psychologist; but he almost always reveals his genius on a stage crowded with people who behave like the men and women one reads about in the police news. — Robert Wilson Lynd

And remember the old dogs
who fought so well:
Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.
If you think they didn't go crazy
in tiny rooms
just like you're doing now
without women
without food
without hope
then you're not ready.
drink more beer.
there's time.
and if there's not
that's all right
too. — Charles Bukowski

You are not Dostoevsky,' said the woman ...
'You never can tell ... ' he answered.
'Dostoevsky is dead,' the woman said, a bit uncertainly.
'I protest!' he said with heat, 'Dostoevsky is immortal! — Mikhail Bulgakov