Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was a Russian novelist, philosopher, short story writer, essayist, and journalist. He was a person who had an immense influence on 20th-century fiction.
Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in 1821. At his early age itself, he was introduced to literature through all the fairy tales, legends, and foreign authors' books. At the age of 15, he left school to set foot into Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute. After completing his graduation, he worked as an engineer and translated books to earn extra money.
In the mid-1840s, he wrote his first novel, "Poor Folk", which acquired a chance to enter Saint Petersburg's literary circles. He was arrested in 1849 for belonging to a literary group that banned books of Tsarist Russia. After his exile from the military, he began to work as a journalist and published and edited his articles. He wrote the book A Writer's Diary, which is a collection of his writings.
His most acclaimed works include Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov. His work consists of 12 novels, four novellas, 16 short stories, and numerous other works. Many literary experts rate him as one of the distinguished psychological novelists in the literature world. His novel Notes from Underground is contemplated to be the first works of existentialist literature.
In 1876, he continued to work on his Diary. The book includes various essays and short stories about society, politics, religion, and ethics. The collection sold more than twice the copies of his previous books. He received more letters from readers than ever before, and people of all ages and fields started to stop by.
On 25 January 1881, while searching for members of the terrorist organization Narodnaya Volya, he suffered a pulmonary hemorrhage the next day. After the second hemorrhage, doctors were called and then, the third hemorrhage followed. While dying, he did request to recite a lesson of The Prodigal Son.
He truly was an inspiration to people all over the world. And his absence will surely be missed.
Following are some of the famous Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes that will keep you motivated all along.
The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.
Unhappiness is the feeling of not being pleased and content with a particular situation in life. Changes in our lives cause unhappiness. The way we do things or the way we think is what determines life.
Dostoevsky says that to find happiness is very simple. You just have to find the origin of unhappiness. Find what troubled you and turn those minutes into a joyful one. And when those moments of unhappiness are determined to change them into a happy one.
Unhappiness means lack of happiness. So, try to be as happy you can.
Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.
To love someone is to put their needs before yours. It means to want your partner's happiness and applaud them for the way they are.
To love a person is to care, understand and respect the person. Learn to admire the person the way he is. You need to support the person in anything and everything, even when you do not agree. In reality, it is not easy to love a person as you need to commit to that person in all possible ways.
In actuality, to care and understand a person is not simple. It requires a lot of patience and tolerance. So, to love in real life seems to be a hard and terrible thing. And when in a dream, love seems to be effortless, which is true if you truly love someone.
A little effort and lots of care and understanding are what a perfect recipe for love. Therefore, try it as soon s you can.
Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.
Suffering means the state of undergoing pain, agony, or troubles you face in your life. It can be said as an unpleasant or even tormenting experience that affects a person at the mental level.
Dostoevsky says that a man sometimes needs suffering to fulfill his dreams in his life. He says that a man doesn't desire the things he truly wants. He would not know what to do once he achieves the things he wanted. The thing which he unknowingly seeks is what gives meaning to his life.
Suffering will always follow us because we are chasing after a meaningful life. And you cannot live a significant life without suffering. And a man should learn to embrace his pain and to even love it.
Suffering is what makes us stronger and a better person. Therefore, learn to embrace and love your suffering.
Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.
This quote is from the book Crime and Punishment which was published n 1867. This book is a suspense and crime thriller. It talks about the crime and the punishment the lead character receives.
Dostoevsky says that it is very difficult for a person to speak sincerely. To speak with honesty seems like a strenuous task at times. It is a known fact that our brain is better at telling the truth. But repeated lying can become our habit which makes it difficult to speak the truth.
It is not easier than compliments as compliments are an expression to praise someone. It is difficult to say the truth all the time but try to be truthful whenever you can.
Therefore, start to speak when you can.
Few more Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes....
To go wrong in one's way is better than to go right in someone else's.
To walk in someone's path is to follow what the other person did and do the same thing. It is an easy task as you already know what path you need to walk, and the only thing you need is to do.
When you start to do things, you learn something new. And with each new thing, you start to discover your potentials and capability. You learn your limitations and capacity and try to overcome them.
To walk on the path created by you, you come across your mistakes. Mistakes are something from which you gain knowledge. It is perfectly fine to make mistakes as they help you grow. Therefore, it is better to carve your path and find success.
What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
Hell is a place where they say all the pain, hate, agony, and suffering is what you get. It is considered a place where the wicked are punished after death. It is something that is often a term but not a reality.
Dostoevsky asks the concept of hell. He believes that it is the pain of not being to be able to love. To love others, you need to love yourself at first. Loving oneself is the first step even to know how to love others.
There are situations where you cannot love the person who loves you. It is all because of the circumstances which make you do the worse. But do not always blame your condition as you can change them.
Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.
Troubles are something that causes a feeling of worry or anxiety. A situation in which you experience problems, usually because of something bad or has done wrong. Troubles are something you need to be worried about.
Dostoevsky says that a man loves to count all his difficulty. He is a selfish person who only loves to complain about all the small things in life. We have a habit of only viewing all the pain we have. We always remember the things that hurt us but forget all the happiness we have.
Humans always fail to recall all the moments of joy. We always keep track of all the pain and suffering and ignore happiness. Instead, we should learn to recall all the moments of delight and triumph.
We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.
Strangers are someone you don't know, and yet you share a bond with them. They are people you meet unexpectedly in your journey of life. They are people who you encounter by chance.
At times we met certain people in our life who turns our life into the most interesting path. Those people e often termed as strangers who turn out to be interesting even at first glance. They are someone who somehow starts to become a part of our life even without knowing.
Even without a word spoken, we become fascinated by them as a person. They start to turn out into something that we find amusing. They come into our life without warning and become someone crucial in our lives.
Continue reading some famous Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes...
The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.
Human beings live their lives as they want to achieve something in their life. To stay alive is an easy task as you do not need to stress about the things happening in your life. You just accept life as it comes and stops reacting to silly things.
The puzzle of human fact is not just to stay alive but also to find the reason to live. To live a life without any purpose is quite meaningless. You need to have certain goals in your life as only then life becomes interesting.
When you have a reason to stay alive, you start to know things and try to learn what you don't know. A new world opens in front of you. Therefore, always find a motive to live your life for.
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
New beginnings are always something we humans are excited about and also the things which we fear the most. Any new things seem difficult at first. We just need to take that one step, and then it becomes simple.
Humans always have a habit of assuming things even without trying. So, any new thing seems complicated at first. Instead of assuming, take that path and discover a new you. A new path may seem hard at first, but it becomes quite easy later on when you love what to do.
To start something or to learn a new word are all things that seem like a challenge when we begin. So, when in fear, think about why you wanted to do it, and suddenly everything comes to its place. And then begin with a smile.
To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.
Sufferings are something that teaches you to appreciate all the little things you have in your life. It acts as a motivation that brings out a better version of ourselves.
Dostoevsky says that to love is to suffer, and if it is not present, there is no love. It is quite a true statement. Loving something is not easy as it seems. You need to be prepared for the unexpected as love itself is unpredictable. It takes courage to hold a hand and to keep holding it.
The distance between holding a hand and keep on holding hands is a journey in which there may be pain, agony and you may be distressed at times. But the love you have between is what still helps you keep going even when it is difficult.
Suffering is what truly helps us to understand the bond we share with the other person. Therefore, suffering plays an important part in your life.
If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.
Self-respect is to respect yourself and to consider yourself as a human being. It is all about self-control and worth. To value yourself for who you are as a person is what self-respect is all about.
Dostoevsky says that if you want to be respected by others, then you need to value yourself. You need to understand that only when you start to treat yourself with respect only then, you will look at yourself with admiration.
When you start to respect yourself, it will force others to treat you with respect. And then you learn to tend yourself with enough love and care as self-love is important.
Besides, nowadays, almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous and are miserable because of it.
To be afraid of something is to be scared o someone or something in particular. Every person has his fears which are hidden from the outside world. They are afraid of admitting their fears.
Dostoevsky says that these days almost all efficient people are scared of being wrong. They have a feeling to perform well in any situation, which makes it tough for them. A feeling of pressure makes them feel that one mistake may cost their life.
But it is not true as he is also a person and everyone has the right to make their own set of mistakes in life. A competent person often feels that he will be mocked when he fails to perform. And due to this, he is always depressed.
So, it is fine even if you are an efficient person; you can still make blunders but be sure to correct them.
If you want to overcome the whole world, overcome yourself.
To overcome something means to succeed in dealing with a problem or difficulties in your life. It means to beat all the conflicts and struggles you face. You need to learn to deal with it and control it successfully.
Dostoevsky says if you want to control the whole world, first learn to conquer yourself as we are a complicated creature in this world. Human behavior is one of the most unpredictable things in our life. We often have different reactions to the same situations.
To overcome yourself, you need to stop all those that stop you from achieving your goals in your life. You should be able to control the part that stops you from enjoying your life.
So, stop analyzing and start living your life the way it should be lived.
Destroy my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I will follow you.
Desire is the longing or hope for a particular outcome, person, or even a thing. To desire for something is what makes us alive; as for that, we start to strive. And slowly, it becomes a purpose of our life.
Ideals are the rules set by our self to help us in our life to take major decisions in our life. It helps us to determine our priorities in our life. If you have high ideals in your life, you have your own beliefs to decide what is right and wrong.
Dostoevsky says that you can shatter all his aspirations, eliminate all his ethics, but you need to show him something much better than that. If you find something interesting than my passion and morals, I will surely go along with you.
It simply means that his desires and ideals are vital for him, without which he cannot function his life.
Some more Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes...
Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it ... one must have the courage to dare.
Power is the capacity to act or do something in a way you want to. It is the ability to influence others' behaviour - the potential of doing or achieving something on your own.
Dostoevsky says that power is only given to those who dare to kneel when needed and to accept it. You need to have the spirit to deal with the worst and be prepared for the terrible situation that is yet to come.
Learn to bow to others as it only helps you to grow. It is not a sign of failure. Rather it takes a large amount of tenacity to stoop. Therefore, learn to behave according to what the situation demands.
Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.
A lie is a claim that is believed to be false but typically used to trick others. It starts as an excuse to rescue us but later on turns into our habit, which becomes a difficult one to change.
To be deceptive to ourselves is difficult to detect as we are conditioned to find whether others lie to us. There quite a lot of reasons why we start to lie. We are not honest about our motives, or maybe because we are not honest about what we need or any other reason.
The main thing for us to understand is that it is a habit to lie to ourselves, which needs to be identified at the start. And change it as it may soon be something which becomes difficult to replace.
Break what must be broken, once for all, that's all, and take the suffering on oneself.
To break something means to separate it into many parts or pieces in a sudden and powerful or in a brutal way. It simply means to destroy something which you had once kept.
Dostoevsky says that break what must be shattered for once and all. It means that when someone breaks your heart, it gets shattered only for that time.
Rather than getting withered repeatedly, suffer for one last time and end it for once. Be strong enough to take all the pain for yourself.
It's life that matters, nothing but life—the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.
Life is something whose meaning is difficult to find. Some say it is to find your meaning. In our whole life, what matters is what we have created all along with our life.
Dostoevsky says it's the life that is significant, and nothing else is as important as life. Life is all about the process of uncovering the real you, which is often hidden behind a mask. We often put on a mask to face reality and hide the real us.
It is a never-ending and endless process that will keep on occurring. It is not only about recognizing you but also the process of learning new things.
Life is beautiful if you truly make it. So, start realizing things about yourself and discover something new.
But how could you live and have no story to tell?
To live your life is to understand yourself in a better way. To know what your priorities are and how to achieve them.
Dostoevsky asks that how can you live your life without a story to say. It means that throughout our lives, all of us had experienced that have changed us. And all those changes in our self will surely have a tale of itself.
Each change in us has a reason behind it, and that reason is what the piece is about. He says that if you have changed, then you surely have lots of scenarios to recite about.
Therefore, create your story, the one that will live on forever.
Look around and learn to notice the beauty around you. Stop comparing yourself with others. Learn to love the life you live. Start to enjoy every minute of your life. Start loving yourself as everything begins from there. Embrace all your flaws and turn them into something beautiful. And once in a while, get up and admire the sunrise. As each ray of light brings new hope to your life.
