novelist, journalist · 1821–1881
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский
Russian novelist and journalist. Sentenced to death in 1849 for a socialist reading circle, reprieved on the scaffold and sent to a Siberian prison camp, he came back to write novels in which ideas are argued out by characters who live and die by them. Because his novels give the strongest lines to people the book contests, many of his best-known quotes are a character's view, not his.
LifeLoveDeathGodFaithDoubtHopeHappinessSufferingPainFreedomTruthLiesBeautyKindnessCompassionLonelinessChildrenWorkPowerSocietyPoliticsReligionMoralityEvilSinConscienceCrimeReasonEmotionsSoulDreamsNatureTimeChangeWisdomHumanitySelf-knowledgeDespairMeaning of lifePrisonEducation
Genuine
63My God, a whole moment of happiness! Is that too little for the whole of a man's life?
Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.
Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it — that is what you must do.
Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! … God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.
Beauty will save the world.
It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.
The one essential condition of human existence is that man should always be able to bow down before something infinitely great.
To become a true Russian means to become brother of all men.
Compassion is the chief and perhaps the only law of human existence.
If the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.
The dreamer, if you want an exact definition, is not a human being but a creature of an intermediate sort.
An 'extraordinary' man has the right to decide in his own conscience to overstep certain obstacles.
Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.
To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.
Some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education.
Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.
I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man.
I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind.
If there is no God, then I am God.
It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.
It's life that matters, nothing but life — the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.
Judge the Russian people not by the abominations they so often commit, but by the great and holy things for which, even in their abomination, they constantly yearn.
I didn't kill a human being, I killed a principle!
Go at once, this very minute, stand at the cross-roads, bow down, first kiss the earth which you have defiled, and then bow down to all the world and say to all men aloud, 'I am a murderer!'
Lack of originality has always been considered the foremost quality of the practical man.
What if I were not to die! What if I could go back to life — what eternity! I would turn every minute into an age; I would lose nothing, I would count every minute as it passed.
Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness.
Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything.
The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.
Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.
Love life more than the meaning of it.
The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that's the great thing, and that's everything; nothing else is wanted.
To love people as they are is impossible. And yet one must.
Man is a creature that can get used to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.
Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.
Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!
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.
Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. It's only that.
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!
People, love one another — who said that? Whose commandment is that?
There are three powers, three powers alone, able to conquer and to hold captive for ever the conscience of these impotent rebels for their happiness: miracle, mystery and authority.
Money is coined liberty, and so it is ten times dearer to the man who is deprived of freedom.
If one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely, to inflict on him the most terrible punishment, one need only give him work of an absolutely, completely useless and meaningless character.
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.
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.
If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and it really were so that the truth is outside Christ, I would rather remain with Christ than with the truth.
If it were mathematically proved to you that the truth excludes Christ, you'd prefer to stick to Christ rather than to the truth.
If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself.
We are each responsible to all for all.
It's not God that I don't accept, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket.
The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for.
The soul is healed by being with children.
Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring. I love the blue sky.
Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering. … Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.
The higher harmony is not worth the tears of one tortured child.
If he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once! Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!
To be too conscious is an illness — a real thorough-going illness.
Twice two makes four is not life, gentlemen, but the beginning of death.
Starting from unlimited freedom, I arrive at unlimited despotism.
What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea.
I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I always get my tea.
Paraphrased
1Not theirs
14The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
Look at you comforting others with the words you wish someone had said to you.
The darker the night, the brighter the stars, the deeper the grief, the closer is God!
I was burning, while you came blaming me for the smell of ashes.
Loving someone means giving them power to destroy you and trusting they won't.
Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
The price of loving someone very much is never loving anyone again.
All this struggle for life that just ends on a random day.
The most terrifying freedom is discovering that even your suffering is your own fault.
To love someone means to see him as God intended him.
Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles.
Two intelligent people cannot fall in love; true love needs one idiot.
Trust no one in whom the desire to punish is strong.
We all came out from under Gogol's 'Overcoat'.