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Over 100 Fyodor Dostoevsky quotes

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. Numerous literary critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces

  • Notes from Underground (1864)
  • Crime and Punishment (1866)
  • The Idiot (1868–1869)
  • Demons (1871–1872)
  • The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)
  • A Writer’s Diary

Quotes

Above all, don’t lie to yourself.
Beauty will save the world.
It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool’s paradise.
But how could you live and have no story to tell?
The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!
If you want to overcome the whole world, overcome yourself.
This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness.
To think too much is a disease.
Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering…
To go wrong in one’s own way is better then to go right in someone else’s.
To live without Hope is to Cease to live.
I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.
There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.
If there is no God, then I am God.

Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.
The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
For broad understanding and deep feeling, you need pain and suffering.
The world will be saved by beauty.
If everything on earth were rational, nothing would happen.
Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice.
Reason is the slave of passion.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
Destroy my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I will follow you.
The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.
When reason fails, the devil helps!
You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.
You can be sincere and still be stupid.
Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly.
I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.

Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.
When he has lost all hope, all object in life, man becomes a monster in his misery.
I utter what you would not dare think.
The Russian soul is a dark place.
The soul is healed by being with children.
Without God all things are permitted.
To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.
I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind.
Money is coined liberty.
Anyone who can appease a man’s conscience can take his freedom away from him.
Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!
We are citizens of eternity.
Oh I’ve plenty of time, my time is entirely my own.
It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.
Truly great men must, I think, experience great sorrow on the earth.
I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.
It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.
Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.
He who masters the grey everyday is a hero.

The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.
To love someone means to see them as God intended them.
It is amazing what one ray of sunshine can do for a man!
Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.
My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn’t that enough for a whole lifetime?
Compassion is the chief law of human existence.
If man has one good memory to go by, that may be enough to save him.
Never mind a little dirt, if the goal is splendid!
If the person laughs well, they are a good person.
My soul bleeds and the blood steadily, silently, disturbingly slowly, swallows me whole.
Wealth is the number of things one can do without.
Don’t be like everyone else, even if you are the only one.
It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young, dear reader.
I believe there is no one deeper, lovelier, more sympathetic and more perfect than Jesus…
Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely.
Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
With love one can live even without happiness.

Suffering is part and parcel of extensive intelligence and a feeling heart.
I swear to you, sirs, that excessive consciousness is a disease – a genuine, absolute disease.
Man is unhappy because he doesn’t know he’s happy. If anyone finds out he’ll become happy at once.
There is immeasurably more left inside than what comes out in words.
The man who is happy is fulfilling the purpose of existence.
In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith.
Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled.
It’s the moon that makes it so still, weaving some mystery.
It’s difficult to judge beauty; I am not ready yet. Beauty is a riddle.
Whoever steps on the lowest step will surely step on the highest.
Realists do not fear the results of their study.
After all, bluff and real emotion exist so easily side by side.
Man is stupid, phenomenally stupid.
Lying is a delightful thing for it leads to the truth.
The absurd is only too necessary on earth. The world stands on absurdities.
Right attitudes produces right action.
Words are not deeds.
From a hundred rabbits you can’t make a horse.
Life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we refuse to see it.
I am too young and I’ve loved you too much.

And do you know, Sonia, that low ceilings and tiny rooms cramp the soul and the mind?
Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it – that is what you must do.
A beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel.
Every one is really responsible to all men for all men and for everything.
It suddenly seemed to me that I was lonely, that everyone was forsaking me and going away from me.
How can a man of consciousness have the slightest respect for himself.
Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!
I’ve never been a coward at heart, although I’ve always been a coward in action;.
There is no idea, no fact, which could not be vulgarized and presented in a ludicrous light.
Drive nature out of the door and it will fly in at the window.
Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!
The consciousness of life is higher than life.
Life is in ourselves and not in the external.
I want to suffer and be purified by suffering!
I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I.
Let us be servants in order to be leaders.
Make us your slaves, but feed us.
Only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.
One cannot love what one does not know.

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