Fyodor Dostoevsky famous quotes

Perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Intelligent #Men #Intelligence

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Love #Suffering #Hell

Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Men #Hands #Cowardice

It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Life Changing

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.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Inspirational #Pain #Heart

My friend, the truth is always implausible, did you know that? To make the truth more plausible, it's absolutely necessary to mix a bit of falsehood with it. People have always done so.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#People #Done #Truth Is

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.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Fashion #Hipster #Conceited

I believe the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Believe #Men #Ungrateful

You cannot imagine what sorrow and anger seize one's whole soul when a great idea, which one has long and piously revered, is picked up by some bunglers and dragged into the street, to more fools like themselves, and one suddenly meets it in the flea market, unrecognizable, dirty, askew, absurdly presented, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid children.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Children #Stupid #Dirty

The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Escaping #Way #Prison

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.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Men #Progress #Trying

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Men #Literature #Months

Drive nature out of the door and it will fly in at the window
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Doors #Window

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.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Love #Animal #World

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.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Positive #Happiness #Happy

To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Life #Hate #Love Is

I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Men #Thinking #Devil

Beauty would save the world.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Deep Thought #World #Save The World

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

#Friendship #True Love #Love You

In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Simple #People #Wicked

A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Criminals #Citizens #Prison

The formula 'Two and two make five' is not without its attractions.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Two #Perspective #Formulas

You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Healing #Healed #Burn Out

And so I ask myself: 'Where are your dreams?' And I shake my head and mutter: 'How the years go by!' And I ask myself again: 'What have you done with those years? Where have you buried your best moments? Have you really lived? Look,' I say to myself, 'how cold it is becoming all over the world!' And more years will pass and behind them will creep grim isolation. Tottering senility will come hobbling, leaning on a crutch, and behind these will come unrelieved boredom and despair. The world of fancies will fade, dreams will wilt and die and fall like autumn leaves from the trees. . . .
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Dream #Fall #Autumn

Above all, don't lie to yourself.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Lying

Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Meaningful #Work #Men

People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Animal #Men #People

Let us not forget that the reasons for human actions are usually incalculably more complex and diverse than we tend to explain them later, and are seldom clearly manifest.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Action #Forget #Reason

I believe there is no one deeper, lovelier, more sympathetic and more perfect than Jesus...
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Jesus #Believe #Perfect

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

#Men #Trouble

The death of a child is the greatest reason to doubt the existence of God.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Atheist #Children #Doubt

Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Evil #Politics #Easier

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

#Attitude #Views #Earth

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Love #Life #Truth

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.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Book #Sight #People

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#World #Unhappiness #Unsaid

Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Happiness #Laughter #Lying

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

#Heart #Past #Thinking

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Honesty #Integrity #Character

We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Gogol #Overcoat #Russian Literature

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

#Children #People #Giving

He did not know that the new life would not be given him for nothing, that he would have to pay dearly for it, that it would cost him great striving, great suffering. But that is the beginning of a new story -- the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Men #Suffering #New Life

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

#Real #Disease #Honest

It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Unhappy #Paradise #Fool

The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Life #Men #Keys

You ache with it all; and the more mysterious it is, the more you ache.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Mysterious #Ache

I swear to you gentlemen, that to be overly conscious is a sickness, a real, thorough sickness.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Real #Gentleman #Sickness

Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Relationship #Dream #Action

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 and for all, you may subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Strong #Humble #Humility

Luxuries are easy to take up but very difficult to give up
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Giving Up #Luxury #Easy

I tell you, the old-fashioned doctor who treated all diseases has completely disappeared, now there are only specialists, and they advertise all the time in the newspapers. If your nose hurts, they send you to Paris: there's a European specialist there, he treats noses. You go to Paris, he examines your nose: I can treat only your right nostril, he says, I don't treat left nostrils, it's not my specialty, but after me, go to Vienna, there's a separate specialist there who will finish treating your left nostril.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Hurt #Paris #Doctors

There is no sin , and there can be no sin on all the earth , which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God . Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God?
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Men #Forgiving #Earth

Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Over You #Watches #Looks

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.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Respect #Self Esteem #Want

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.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Men #Quality #World

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Lying #Alive #Mystery

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.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Hard Work #Love Is #Long

But how could you live and have no story to tell?
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Stories #Existentialism

I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Humanity #Suffering #Bows

Anyone who can appease a man's conscience can take his freedom away from him.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Men #Conscience #Appease

Whoever has experienced the power and the unrestrained ability to humiliate another human being automatically loses his own sensations. Tyranny is a habit, it has its own organic life, it develops finally into a disease. The habit can kill and coarsen the very best man or woman to the level of a beast. Blood and power intoxicate ... the return of the human dignity, repentance and regeneration becomes almost impossible.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Men #Blood #Levels

Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Truth #Lying #Self Help

But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Success #Player #Men

Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardour of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ of old.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Christian #Jesus #Heart

Right or wrong, it's very pleasant to break something from time to time.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Deep Thought #Chaos #Break

Right attitudes produces right action
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Attitude #Action #Produce

Everybody wants to change the world, but nobody thinks about changing himself.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Thinking #World #Want

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.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Heart #Brain #Suffering

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

#Art #Firsts #Existence

Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself, and every decent man has a considerable number of such things stored away. That is, one can even say that the more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Men #Numbers #Secret

Let us be servants in order to be leaders.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Faith #Inspiration #Order

I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Tea #World #Hell

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Workout #New Relationship #Deep Thought

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

#Love #Soul #Succeed

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

#Gambling #Tables #Superstitions

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.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Men #Numbers #Finding Yourself

If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Deep Thought #Earth #Shelter

As for me, this is my story: I worked and was tortured. You know what it means to compose? No, thank God, you do not! I believe you have never written to order, by the yard, and have never experienced that hellish torture.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Believe #Writing #Mean

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

#Blood #Soul

The soul is healed by being with children.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Love #Spiritual #Children

To live without Hope is to Cease to live.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Hope #Deep Thought #Without Hope

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

#Real #Sunset #Gambling

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!
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Power #Feet #Matter

For what is man without desires, without free will, and without the power of choice but a stop in an organ pipe?
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Men #Choices #Desire

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

#Men #Long #Anxiety

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

#Lying

I am too young and I've loved you too much.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Too Much #Young

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

#Ideas #Easier #Harder

What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Thinking #Deeds #Tiny

The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Men #Secret #Purpose

Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Gratitude #Men #Joy

Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Men #Used #Scoundrels

To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Love #Love Is #Suffering

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.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Men #Laughing #Good Man

If the person laughs well, they are a good person.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Laughing #Good Person #Theologian

The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than anyone else. You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take offense, isn't it? A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a mountain out of a molehill--he knows that himself, yet he will be the first to take offense, and will revel in his resentment till he feels great pleasure in it.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Lying #Men #Mountain

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Happiness #Laughter #Joy

Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Beauty #Heart #Fighting

Realists do not fear the results of their study.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

#Fear #Deep Thought #Study

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

#Horse #Rabbits #Hundred