Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes

I was overpowered by the mere sensation of that dream and it alone survived in my sorely wounded heart.

For though your mind is active enough, your heart is darkened with corruption, and without a pure heart there can be no full or genuine sensibility.

Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more.

Feeling my own humiliation in my heart like the sharp prick of a needle.

Power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up.

It was more difficult not tounderstand than to understand.

Does it matter whether it was a dream or a reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?

Ah youth, youth! That's what happens when you go steeping your soul into Shakespeare

Man is fond of reckoning up his troubles, but does not count his joys.

Don't be surprised that I value prejudice, observe certain conventions, seek power--it's because I know I live in an empty society.

Man is a vile creature!

I believe he was feeling a bit nervous. Possibly it was my costume that took him aback. I was dressed quite well, even elegantly, and looked as if I belonged to the best society.

Try and set yourself the task not to think of a white bear, and the cursed thing comes to mind every minute.

Bah! You want to hear the vilest thing a man’s done and you want him to be a hero at the same time!

We obtained literature by our own efforts, it is a product of our own life, and that is why we love it so much and hold it so dear, why we pin our hopes on it.

Can you blame me, my dear, for looking on this attachment as a romantic folly inspired by that cursed Shakespeare who will poke his nose where he is not wanted?

You needn't be afraid of life! Life is so good when you do something that is good and just.

What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning...

Man only likes counting his grief, he doesn't count his happiness. But if he were to count properly, he'd see that there's enough of both lots for him.

I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness- a real thorough-going illness.

Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. It's only that.

Everything which is of use to mankind is honourable.

This life you cry up so much is what I wanted to extinguish by suicide, whereas my dream, my dream—oh, it has revealed to me a great, new, regenerated intensity of life!

and what shall I have to dream of when I have been so happy in reality beside you!

At that time I was only twenty-four years old. My life then was already gloomy, disorderly, and solitary to the point of savagery.

I invented adventures for myself and made up a life, so as at least to live in some way.

Do you know that I love now to recall and visit at certain dates the places where Iwas once happy in my own way? I love to build up my present in harmony with the irrevocable past...

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.

Suffering and pain are always obligatory for a broad consciousness and a deep heart. Truly great men I think, must feel great sorrow in this world.

Before it was just her infernal curves that fretted me, but now I've taken her whole soul into my soul, and through her I've become a man!

Because I couldn't bear my burden and have come to throw it on another: you suffer too, and I shall feel better! And can you love such a mean wretch?

They suffer, of course... but then they live, they live a real life, not a fantastic one, for suffering is life. Without suffering what would be the pleasure of it?

Consciousness is man's greatest misfortune, still I know that man loves it and will not exchange it for any satisfactions.

And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better - cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?

This is not the place!

It's precisely in despair that you find the most intense pleasure, especially if you are already powerfully conscious of the hopelessness of your predicament.

I saw the truth, I saw and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the ability to live on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of people.

In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden-the demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain

Too many riddles weigh men down on earth. We must solve as we can, and try to keep a dry skin in the water.

What a man need is simply and solely independence volition, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.

I swear to you that to think too much is a disease, a real, actual disease.

In wine is truth, and the truth had all come out, "that is, all the uncleanness of his coarse and envious heart"!

I'm a master of speaking silently—all my life I've spoken silently and I've lived through entire tragedies in silence.

Oh, I have always been proud, I always wanted all or nothing! You see it was just because I am not one who will accept half a happiness, but always wanted all

...everything defiled and degraded. What cannot man live through! Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.

Everyone must look out for himself, and the best time is had by those who're best able to decieve themselves.

A complete atheist stands on the next-to-last upper step to the most complete faith (he may or may not take that step), while the indifferent one has no faith, apart from a bad fear.

The monks used to say that he was more drawn to those who were more sinful, and the greater the sinner the more he loved him.

Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.

What's most revolting is that one is really sad! No, it's better at home. Here at least one blames others for everything and excuses oneself.