Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes
to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all
respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and
offensive to beasts. No animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically
cruel.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The soul is healed by being with children.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The world says: “You have needs – satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the
mighty. Don’t hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more.”
This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the
rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It’s life that matters, nothing but life – the process of discovering, the everlasting and
perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them: The character, the heart,
generous qualities, progressive ideas.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a
number of such things stored away in his mind.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man’s laugh before you know anything
of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up
as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Man is unhappy because he doesn’t know he’s happy. It’s only that.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those they
have slain.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it – that is what you must do.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth,
either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others.
When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his
impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in
satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying – to others and to yourself.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Love a man, even in his sin, for that love is a likeness of the divine love, and is the summit of
love on earth.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It’s easier for a Russian to become an atheist than for anyone else in the world.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Talking nonsense is man’s only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch
over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul
is coarsely and intrusively invaded.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
To go wrong in one’s own way is better then to go right in someone else’s.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during
the first half.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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. And it is just this faith of mine that they laugh at.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Do a man dirt, yourself you hurt.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the
beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Right or wrong, it’s very pleasant to break something from time to time.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things. And if we
understand too quickly, we may not understand well.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I think the devil doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image
and likeness.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don’t bother analyzing his
ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas;
you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he’s a good man.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
You can be sincere and still be stupid.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
In most cases, people, even the most vicious, are much more naive and simple-minded than
we assume them to be. And this is true of ourselves too.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It’s life that matters, nothing but life – the process of discovering, the everlasting and
perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
There are two sorts of mind: one that matters, and one that doesn’t matter.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex
and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
If not reason, then the devil.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find
some one to worship.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed, for God
sets us nothing but riddles.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
To kill someone for committing murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime
itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
What terrible tragedies realism inflicts on people.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must
be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.
Fyodor Dostoevsky