“A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“One of the characters in our story, Gavril Ardalionovitch Ivolgin, belonged to the other category; he belonged to the category of “much cleverer” people; though head to toe he was infected with the desire to be original. But this class of person, as we have observed above, is far less happy than the first. The difficulty is that the intelligent “ordinary” man, even if he does imagine himself at times (and perhaps all his life) a person of genius and originality, nevertheless retains within his heart a little worm of doubt, which sometimes leads the intelligent man in the end to absolute despair. If he does yield in this belief, he is still completely poisoned with inward-driven vanity.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Originality and the feeling of one’s own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Every time you pray if your prayer is sincere there will be new feeling and new meaning in it which will give you fresh courage and you will understand that prayer is an education.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Who doesn’t desire his father’s death?”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing but if we are to give everything its due twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“We are all happy if we only knew it.”
— 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
“Change is what people fear most.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Man is a pliant animal a being who gets accustomed to anything.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“People talk sometimes of ‘bestial’ cruelty, but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beast; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically, so artfully cruel.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“You are really angry with me for not having appeared to you in a red glow, with thunder and lightning, with scorched wings”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“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.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“I love it when people lie! Lying is only man’s privilege over all other organisms. Lying is what makes me a man.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“And what if there are only spiders there, or something of that sort”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“You will have many enemies, but even your foes will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will find your happiness in them, and will bless life and will make others bless it–which is what matters most.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“In any case, you must remember, my dearest, that the main strength of innocence is innocence itself. farewell.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“I love her with all my soul. Why, she is a child! She’s a child now — a real child. Oh! you know nothing about it at all, I see.””And are you assured, at the same time, that you love Aglaya too?””Yes — yes — oh; yes!””How so? Do you want to make out that you love them BOTH?””Yes — yes — both! I do!””Excuse me, prince, but think what you are saying! Recollect yourself!””Without Aglaya — I — I MUST see Aglaya! — I shall die in my sleep very soon — I thought I was dying in my sleep last night. Oh! if Aglaya only knew all — I mean really, REALLY all! Because she must know ALL — that’s the first condition towards understanding. Why cannot we ever know all about another, especially when that other has been guilty? But I don’t know what I’m talking about — I’m so confused. You pained me so dreadfully. Surely — surely Aglaya has not the same expression now as she had at the moment when she ran away? Oh, yes! I am guilty and I know it — I know it! Probably I am in fault all round — I don’t quite know how — but I am in fault, no doubt. There is something else, but I cannot explain it to you, Evgenie Pavlovitch. I have no words; but Aglaya will understand. I have always believed Aglaya will understand — I am assured she will.””No, prince, she will not. Aglaya loved like a woman, like a human being, not like an abstract spirit. Do you know what, my poor prince? The most probable explanation of the matter is that you never loved either the one or the other in reality.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“At first it was simply liking, Nastenka, but now, now !I am just in the same position as you were when you went to him with your bundle. In a worse position than you, Nastenka,because he cared for no one else as you do.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“We’ve got facts,” they say. But facts aren’t everything; at least half the battle consists in how one makes use of them!”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“You don’t feed nightingales on fairy-tales”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“I drink because I wish to multiply my sufferings.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“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.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“It’s life that matters, nothing but life—the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky