Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes

The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.

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.

If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man ... just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.

Learning to love is hard and we pay dearly for it. It takes hard work and a long apprenticeship, for it is not just for a moment that we must learn to love, but forever.

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.

It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.

Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.

I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

Don’t be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid - the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again.

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.

Destroy my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I will follow you.

If everything on earth were rational, nothing would happen.

Perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything.

The more you succeed in loving, the more you'll be convinced at the existence of God and the immortality of your soul.

Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice.

She looked much younger than her age, indeed, which is almost always the case with women who retain serenity of spirit, sensitiveness and pure sincere warmth of heart to old age.

Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.

A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.

Only through suffering can we find ourselves.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

The more incompetent one feels, the more eager he is to fight.

The man who is happy is fulfilling the purpose of existence

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

I believe there is no one deeper, lovelier, more sympathetic and more perfect than Jesus.

I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.

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.

Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!

They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?

The world will be saved by beauty.

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.

Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.

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.

I believe the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.

My friend, the truth is always implausible, did you know that? To make the truth more plausible, it's absolutely necessary to mix a bit of falsehood with it. People have always done so.

You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.

From a hundred rabbits you can't make a horse.

There is immeasurably more left inside than what comes out in words.

He who masters the grey everyday is a hero.

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.

My soul bleeds and the blood steadily, silently, disturbingly slowly, swallows me whole.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

I am a sick man...I am a spiteful man. An unattractive man. I think that my liver hurts.

There is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and useful for life in later years than some good memory, especially a memory connected with childhood, with home.

To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.

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.

If God does not exist, then everything is permissible.

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.

And if there's love, you can do without happiness too. Even with sorrow, life is sweet.

Wealth is the number of things one can do without.

Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from the faith.