Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes

He was a sceptic, he was young, abstract, and therefore cruel.

I don't like being with grown-up people. I've known that a long time. I don't like it because I don't know how to get on with them.

Well, sir, it is precisely my notion that one sees and learns most of all by observing our younger generations.

Lunatics! Vain creatures! They don't believe in God, they don't believe in Christ! Why, you are so eaten up with pride and vanity that you'll end up by eating one another, that's what I prophesy.

The queen who mended her stockings in prison must have looked every inch a queen and even more a queen than at sumptuous banquets and levees.

I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness - a real thorough-going illness.

...there is no explaining anything by reasoning and so it is useless to reason.

It seems to me that the whole of human life can be summed up in the one statement that man only exists for the purpose of proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not an organ.

If I had had the power to prevent my own birth I should certainly never have consented to accept existence under such ridiculous conditions.

Crime? What crime? ... My killing a loathsome, harmful louse, a filthy old moneylender woman ... and you call that a crime?

(…)man holds the remedy in his own hands, and lets everything go its own way, simply through cowardice- that is an axiom.

Moreover, in order to understand any man one must be deliberate and careful to avoid forming prejudices and mistaken ideas, which are very difficult to correct and get over afterwards.

The sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of all sacrifices

And, beginning to grind his teeth again, Pyotr Petrovich admitted that he'd been a fool--but only to himself, of course.

He longed to revenge himself on everyone for his own unseemliness

Another circumstance, too, worried me in those days: that there was no one like me and I was unlike anyone else. "I am alone and they are everyone, " I thought–and pondered.

Nothing helps a man to reform like thinking of the past with regret.

if [God] doesn't exist, man is the chief of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God?

…but it is in despair that the most burning pleasures occur, especially when one is all too highly conscious of the hopelessness of one’s position.

…but it is in despair that the most burning pleasures occur…

Equality is to be found only in the spiritual dignity of man

In Russia, drunks are our kindest people. Our kindest people are also the most drunk.

His mind is in bondage. He is haunted by a great, usolved doubt. He is one of those who doesn't want millions, but an answer to their questions.

The first category is always the man of the present, the second the man of the future. The first preserve the world and people it, the second move the world and lead it to its goal.

Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort.

Indeed, in that sense we’re all rather often almost like mad people, only with the slight difference that the ‘sick’ are somewhat madder than we are, so that it’s necessary to draw a line here.

Do you know, Alexey Fyodorovitch, how people do go out of their mind?

I looked at her for three seconds, or five perhaps, with fearful hatred-that hate which is only a hair's-breath from love, from the maddest love!

If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.The Brothers KaramazovMitya (Dmitri) to Aloysha who visits him in prison, Book XI - Ivan, Chapter 4 - A Hymn and a Secret.

We shall have thousands of Shatovs to deal with

The instinct of self-preservation and the urge to self-destruction are equally strong in man! The Devil has equal a sway over humanity as God until a time still unknown to us.

I would give away all this superstellar life, all the ranks and honours, simply to be transformed into the soul of a merchant’s wife weighing eighteen stone and set candles at God’s shrine

You see, there's a theory current you're insane, or you lean strongly in that direction.

Oh, those grumblers! They all take principles as motives and dare not follow their desires.

But in the end I'd marry her to the one she herself loved. To a father, the man his daughter falls in love with herself always seems the worst. That's how it is.

It’s not miracles that generate faith, but faith that generates miracles

a wise man is not afraid to face the truth

If God thought it necessary to offer rewards for love, your God must be immoral.

...and in fact I've noticed that faith always seems to be less in the daytime

What's the most offensive is not their lying- one can always forgive lying- lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth- what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying....

Truth with love is a lie

I can't bear the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom.

The only gain of civilisation for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations - and absolutely nothing more.

It's life that matters, nothing but life—the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.

You don't feed nightingales on fairy-tales

In any case, you must remember, my dearest, that the main strength of innocence is innocence itself. farewell.

And what if there are only spiders there, or something of that sort

I love it when people lie! Lying is only man's privilege over all other organisms. Lying is what makes me a man.

You are really angry with me for not having appeared to you in a red glow, with thunder and lightning, with scorched wings

Man is a pliant animal a being who gets accustomed to anything.