Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes

Forgive me... for my love -for ruining you with my love.

And so in that very shame I suddenly begin a hymn.

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.

Every ant knows the formula of its ant-hill, every bee knows the formula of its beehive. They know it in their own way, not in our way. Only humankind does not know its own formula.

Sometimes a man is intensely, even passionately, attached to suffering — that is a fact.

Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself, and every decent man has a considerable number of such things stored away. That is, one can even say that the more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind.

Neither man nor nation can exist without a sublime idea.

One must first learn to live oneself before one blames others.

Beggars, especially noble beggars, should never show themselves in the street; they should ask for alms through the newspapers. It's still possible to love one's neighbor abstractly, and even occasionally from a distance, but hardly ever up close.

Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn?" Marmeladov's question came suddenly into his mind "for every man must have somewhere to turn.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

Suffering is part and parcel of extensive intelligence and a feeling heart.

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.

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.

Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.

In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular actuality, vividness, and extraordinary semblance of reality. At times monstrous images are created, but the setting and the whole picture are so truth-like and filled with details so delicate, so unexpectedly, but so artistically consistent, that the dreamer, were he an artist like Pushkin or Turgenev even, could never have invented them in the waking state. Such sick dreams always remain long in the memory and make a powerful impression on the overwrought and deranged nervous system.

I cannot truly imagine a truly great person who hasn't suffered.

in the newspapers I read a biography about an American. He left his whole huge fortune to factories and for the positive sciences, his skeleton to the students at the academy there, and his skin to make a drum so as to have the American national anthem drummed on it day and night.

When I look back at the past and think of all the time I squandered in error and idleness,... then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift... every minute could have been an eternity of happiness! If only youth knew! Now my life will change; now I will be reborn.

If you happen to have a wart on your nose or forehead, you cannot help imagining that no one in the world has anything else to do but stare at your wart, laugh at it, and condemn you for it, even though you have discovered America.

Every man needs a place to go to.

And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking into these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him!

I almost do not exist now and I know it; God knows what lives in me in place of me.

There is no object on earth which cannot be looked at from a cosmic point of view.

Everywhere I am the object of an unbelievable esteem, the interest in me is, quite simply, tremendous.

I have a plan-to go mad.

Eh, brother, but nature has to be corrected and guided, otherwise we'd all drown in prejudices. Without that there wouldn't be even a single great man.

For all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world.

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

My sweetheart! When I think of you, it's as if I'm holding some healing balm to my sick soul, and although i suffer for you, i find that even suffering for you is easy.

All the Utopias will come to pass only when we grow wings and all people are converted into angels.

Let us be servants in order to be leaders.

I don’t even know what I’m writing, I have no idea, I don’t know anything, and I’m not reading over it, and I’m not correcting my style, and I’m writing just for the sake of writing, just for the sake of writing more to you… My precious, my darling, my dearest!

Love life more than the meaning of it?

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

It is always so, when we are unhappy we feel more strongly the unhappiness of others; our feeling is not shattered, but becomes concentrated.

He who masters the grey everyday is a hero.

I know you'll probably get angry with me for that, shout, stamp your feet: "speak just for yourself and your miseries in the underground, and don't go saying 'we all.'" Excuse me, gentleman, but I am not justifying myself with this allishness. As far as I myself am concerned, I have merely carried to an extreme in my life what you have not dared to carry even halfway, and, what's more, you've taken your cowardice for good sense, and found comfort in thus deceiving yourselves. So that I, perhaps, come out even more "living" than you.

Man is stupid, phenomenally stupid.

But people will laugh at all sorts of things.

I may be mistaken but it seems to me that a man may be judged by his laugh, and that if at first encounter you like the laugh of a person completely unknown to you, you may say with assurance that he is good.

Alyosha's heart could not bear uncertainty, for the nature of his love was always active. He could not love passively; once he loved, he immediately also began to help.

I am crazy about mysterious things.

Often a man endures for several years, submits and suffers the cruellest punishments, and then suddenly breaks out over some minute trifle, almost nothing at all.

Being in love doesn't mean loving.

Remember that you must never sell your soul. Never accept payment in advance.... Never give a work to the printer before it is finished. This is the worst thing you can do.... It constitutes the murder of your own ideas.

What is most vile and despicable about money is that it even confers talent. And it will do so until the end of the world.

All people seem to be divided into'ordinary'and 'extraordinary'. The ordinary people must lead a life of strict obedience and have no right to transgress the law because?theyare ordinary.Whereas the extraordinary people have the right to commit any crime they like and transgress the law in any way just because they happen to be extraordinary.

originality and a feeling of one's own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.

Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.

For broad understanding and deep feeling, you need pain and suffering.

Life is in ourselves and not in the external.

Make us your slaves, but feed us.

If it were considered desirable to destroy a human being, the only thing necessary would be to give his work a character of uselessness

Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!

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

Loving someone is different from being in love with someone. You can hate someone you're in love with

... you simply can't imagine what men will say!

But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road- there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt.

But how could you live and have no story to tell?