Fyodor Dostoevsky Best 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

At first, art imitates life. Then life will imitate art.Then life will find its very existence from the arts. — 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

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

If God is dead, everything is allowed. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

I know that my youth will triumph over everything - every disillusionment, every disgust with life. I've asked myself many times whether there is in in the world any despair that would overcome this frantic and perhaps unseemly thirst for life in me, and I've come to the conclusion that there isn't ... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote and infinite time and space, but here on Earth ... I want to see with my own eyes the lamb lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been about. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

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

Reason and Knowledge have always played a secondary, subordinate, auxiliary role in the life of peoples, and this will always be the case. A people is shaped and driven forward by an entirely different kind of force, one which commands and coerces them and the origin of which is obscure and inexplicable despite the reality of its presence. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

Alyosha's heart could not bear uncertainty, for the nature of his love was always active. He could not love passively; once he loved, he immediately also began to help. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

" 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

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

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

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

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

I am crazy about mysterious things. — Fyodor Dostoevsky