Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes: 37

• 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.

  The Brothers Karamazov

• 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.

  Crime and Punishment

• To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.

  Crime and Punishment

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

  The Brothers Karamazov

• The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!

  Crime and Punishment

• Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.

  Notes from Underground

• The soul is healed by being with children.

• I love mankind, he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.

  The Brothers Karamazov

• But how could you live and have no story to tell?

  White Nights

• Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.

• To love someone means to see them as God intended them.

• To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.

  Notes from Underground

• My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?

  White Nights

• Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.

  The Brothers Karamazov

• Without God all things are permitted.

• The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.

  Crime and Punishment

• What makes a hero? Courage, strength, morality, withstanding adversity? Are these the traits that truly show and create a hero? Is the light truly the source of darkness or vice versa? Is the soul a source of hope or despair? Who are these so called heroes and where do they come from? Are their origins in obscurity or in plain sight?

  Notes from Underground

• We are all happy if we but knew it.

• But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road- there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt.

  The Brothers Karamazov

• If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.

• Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled.

• 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.

  Crime and Punishment

• Believe to the end, even if all men went astray and you were left the only one faithful; bring your offering even then and praise God in your loneliness.

  The Brothers Karamazov

• Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely.

  Crime and Punishment

• 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.

• Men are made for happiness, and he who is completely happy has the right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.

  The Brothers Karamazov

• For if there's no everlasting God, there's no such thing as virtue, and there's no need of it.

  The Brothers Karamazov

• originality and a feeling of one's own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.

• Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God's help I attain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy.

  The Brothers Karamazov

• Do you think it is a vain hope that one day man will find joy in noble deeds of light and mercy, rather than in the coarse pleasures he indulges in today -- gluttony, fornication, ostentation, boasting, and envious vying with his neighbor? I am certain this is not a vain hope and that the day will come soon.

  The Brothers Karamazov

• It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.

• It is easier for a Russian to become an Atheist, than for any other nationality in the world. And not only does a Russian 'become an Atheist,' but he actually BELIEVES IN Atheism, just as though he had found a new faith, not perceiving that he has pinned his faith to a negation. Such is our anguish of thirst!

  The Idiot

• Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.

  Crime and Punishment

• What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind-then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it's all as it should be.

  Crime and Punishment

• For everyone now strives most of all to seperate his person, wishing to experience the fullness of life within himself, and yet what comes of all his efforts is not the fullness of life, but full suicide, for instead of the fullness of self-definition, they fall into complete isolation.

  The Brothers Karamazov

• Instead of giving a firm foundation for setting the conscience of man at rest forever, Thou didst choose all that is exceptional, vague and enigmatic.

  The Brothers Karamazov

• - В Апокалипсиса ангелът се кълне, че вече няма да има време. - Знам. Това там е много вярно; ясно и точно. Когато човекът достигне щастието, няма да има вече време, защото не е нужно. Много вярна мисъл.- Къде ще го дянат? - Никъде няма да го дяват. Времето не е предмет, а идея. Ще угасне в ума.

  Demons