Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes

Without a clear perception of his reasons for living, man will never consent to live, and will rather destroy himself than tarry on earth, though he be surrounded with bread".

Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith. If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also.

The absurd is only too necessary on earth. The world stands on absurdities.

In summer, intolerable closeness; in winter, unendurable cold. All the floors were rotten. Filth on the floors an inch thick; one could slip and fall.

I think that if one is faced by inevitable destruction -- if a house is falling upon you, for instance -- one must feel a great longing to sit down, close one's eyes and wait, come what may . . .

Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.

To strive consciously for an object and to engage in engineering -- that is, incessantly and eternally to make new roads, wherever they may lead.

They have this social justification for every nasty thing they do!

Man has not the right to turn aside and heed not what is happening in the world around him, and this I maintain on moral grounds of the highest order.

Gambling is a most foolish and imprudent pursuit.

My feelings, gratitude, for instance, are denied me simply because of my social position.

Walking along the crowded row He met the one he used to know.

He seemed, indeed, to accept everything without the least condemnation though often grieving bitterly.

But man is so addicted to systems and to abstract conclusions that he is prepared deliberately to distort the truth, to close his eyes and ears, but justify his logic at all cost.

I have been tortured with longing to believe ... and the yearning grows stronger the more cogent the intellectual difficulties stand in the way.

I agree that two and two make four is an excellent thing; but to give everything its due, two and two make five is also a very fine thing.

I walked along Nevsky Avenue.Actually it was more torture, humiliation, and bilious irritation than a stroll.

If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.

I feel pity for him, and that is a poor sign of love.

Can a man of perception respect himself at all?

Life had stepped into the place of theory.

Pass us by, and forgive us our happiness

But people will laugh at all sorts of things.

Suppose, gentleman, that man is not stupid.

One could never judge a man without seeing him close, for oneself.

He does not like showing his feelings and would rather do a cruel thing than open his heart freely.

But yet I am firmly persuaded that a great deal of consciousness, every sort of consciousness, in fact, is a disease.

Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it — that is what you must do.

Gentlemen, I am tormented by questions; answer them for me.

For men are made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.'

And yet I am convinced that man will never give up true suffering- that is, destruction and chaos. Why, suffering is the sole root of consciousness.

I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind.

If he's alive, everything is in his power! Whose fault is it that he doesn't understand that?

We are citizens of eternity.

But gamblers know how a man can sit for almost twenty-four hours at cards, without looking to right, or to left.

He who desires to see the living God face-to-face should not seek him in the empty, firmament of his mind, but in human love.

If he's honest, he'll steal; if he's human, he'll murder; if he's faithful, he'll deceive.

It suddenly seemed to me that I was lonely, that everyone was forsaking me and going away from me.

..., twice two is four is not life, gentlemen, but the beginning of death.

Thus, as a result of heightened consciousness, a man feels as if it's all right if he's bad as long as he knows it- as though that were any consolation.

Or renounce life altogether! Accept fate obediently as it is, once and for all, and stifle everything in myself, renouncing any right to act, to live, to love.

Russia was a slave in Europe but would be a master in Asia.

I go to spread the tidings, I want to spread the tidings of what? Of the truth , for I have seen it, have seen it with my own eyes , have seen it in all its glory .

In every idea of genius or in every new human idea, or, more simply still, in every serious human idea born in anyone's brain, there is something that cannot possibly be conveyed to others.

A widow, the mother of a family, and from her heart she produces chords to which my whole being responds.

The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was 'sublime and beautiful,'the more deeply I sank into my mire and the more ready I was to sink in it altogether.

One must be a great man indeed to be able to hold out even against common sense." "Or else a fool.

On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge.

I used to imagine adventures for myself, I invented a life, so that I could at least exist somehow.

You are a man still young, so to say, in your first youth and so put intellect above everything.