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Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes
“To live without Hope is to Cease to live.”
“Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.”
“Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!”
“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.”
“The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.”
“To love someone means to see him as God intended him.”
“The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.”
“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.”
“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.”
“It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?”
“Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.”
“Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.”
“Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.”
“Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.”
“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.”
“It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.”
“The formula 'Two and two make five' is not without its attractions.”
“A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.”
“There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.”
“Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.”
“The soul is healed by being with children.”
“Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.”
“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.”
“Realists do not fear the results of their study.”
“Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.”
“If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.”
“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”
“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.”
“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”
“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”
“Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.”
“I love mankind, he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.”
“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
“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.”
“Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human.”
“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
“But how could you live and have no story to tell?”
“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”
“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”
“Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.”
“To love someone means to see them as God intended them.”
“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.”
“I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there - that is living.”
“Right or wrong, it's very pleasant to break something from time to time.”
“The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.”
“Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering...”
“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”
“Beauty will save the world.”
“It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them — the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.”
“You can be sincere and still be stupid.”
