Fyodor Dostoyevsky quotes - page 2

Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardour of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ of old. (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it's good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The stupider one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence wriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave, but stupidity is honest and straightforward. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
If not reason, then the devil. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The prince says that the world will be saved by beauty! And I maintain that the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
To study the meaning of man and of life - I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
To be acutely conscious is a disease, a real, honest-to-goodness disease. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The sky was horribly dark, but one could distinctly see tattered clouds, and between them fathomless black patches. Suddenly I noticed in one of these patches a star, and began watching it intently. That was because that star had given me an idea: I decided to kill myself that night. View quote
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. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy. (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find some one to worship. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it - that is what you must do. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her. View quote
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. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God? View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Is it really not possible to touch the gaming table without being instantly infected by superstition? View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Pass by us, and forgive us our happiness. View quote
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. View quote
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. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side. (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
When... in the course of all these thousands of years has man ever acted in accordance with his own interests? View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A widow, the mother of a family, and from her heart she produces chords to which my whole being responds. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Russia was a slave in Europe but would be a master in Asia. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky