Fyodor Dostoyevsky quotes - page 3

I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared. And it was after that that I found out the truth. I learnt the truth last November - on the third of November, to be precise - and I remember every instant since. (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
It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.
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
Compassion is the chief law of human existence.
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
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
If I seem happy to you . . . You could never say anything that would please me more. For men are made for happiness, and anyone who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.' All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Men like to to count their troubles; few calculate their happiness.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea. And there is only one higher idea on earth, and it is the idea of the immortality of the human soul, for all other "higher" ideas of life by which humans might live derive from that idea alone. (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
What terrible tragedies realism inflicts on people.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
My feelings, gratitude, for instance, are denied me simply because of my social position.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
There is no idea, no fact, which could not be vulgarized and presented in a ludicrous light.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom. –The Grand Inquisitor.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It is always so, when we are unhappy we feel more strongly the unhappiness of others; our feeling is not shattered, but becomes concentrated.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Hold your tongue; you won't understand anything. If there is no God, then I am God.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
You're a gentleman," they used to say to him. "You shouldn't have gone murdering people with a hatchet; that's no occupation for a gentleman.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man... (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
Humiliate the reason and distort the soul...
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
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
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.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky