One of russia’s greatest writers and philosophers fyodor dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky’s works have deeply influenced generations of readers and thinkers all around the world, and fyodor dostoyevsky quotes are timeless and thought-provoking. Here, you’ll find a collection of some of dostoyevsky’s most famous quotes.
Best Quotes From Fyodor Dostoyevsky
✅ “Destroy my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I will follow you.”
“Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice.”
✅ “The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.”
✅ “If everything on earth were rational, nothing would happen.”
✅ “You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.”
✅ “When reason fails, the devil helps!”
✅ “This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness.”
✅ “If you want to overcome the whole world, overcome yourself.”
✅ “If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.”
“The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.”
✅ “To think too much is a disease.”
✅ “Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.”
✅ “Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering…”
✅ “I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind.”
✅ “Dreams, as we all know, are very queer things: some parts are presented with appalling vividness, with details worked up with the elaborate finish of jewellery, while others one gallops through, as it were, without noticing them at all, as, for instance, through space and time.”
✅ “For instance, a strange reflection suddenly occurred to me, that if I had lived before on the moon or on Mars and there had committed the most disgraceful and dishonourable action and had there been put to such shame and ignominy as one can only conceive and realise in dreams, in nightmares, and if, finding myself afterwards on earth, I were able to retain the memory of what I had done on the other planet and at the same time knew that I should never, under any circumstances, return there, then looking from the earth to the moon-should I care or not?”
✅ “If once one has recognised the truth and seen it, you know that it is the truth and that there is no other and there cannot be, whether you are asleep or awake.”
✅ “I suddenly felt that it was all the same to me whether the world existed or whether there had never been anything at all: I began to feel with all my being that there was nothing existing.”
✅ “Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.”
✅ “Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”
✅ “Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!”
✅ “The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.”
✅ “People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.”
✅ “What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
✅ “For broad understanding and deep feeling, you need pain and suffering.”
✅ “The world will be saved by beauty.”
✅ “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.”
✅ “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”
✅ “Reason is the slave of passion.”
✅ “I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there – that is living.”
✅ “I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”
✅ “To live without Hope is to Cease to live.”
✅ “To go wrong in one’s own way is better then to go right in someone else’s.”
✅ “If there is no God, then I am God.”
✅ “Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.”
✅ “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.”
✅ “You can be sincere and still be stupid.”
✅ “Times of crisis, of disruption or constructive change, are not only predictable, but desirable. They mean growth. Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”
✅ “I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.”
✅ “Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly.”
✅ “When he has lost all hope, all object in life, man becomes a monster in his misery.”
✅ “Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.”
✅ “The Russian soul is a dark place.”
✅ “A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.”
✅ “The soul is healed by being with children.”
✅ “I utter what you would not dare think.”
✅ “I always feel when I meet people that I am lower than all, and that they all take me for a buffoon; so I say let me play the buffoon, for you are, every one of you, stupider and lower than I.”
✅ “It is clear to me now that, owing to my unbounded vanity and to the high standard I set for myself, I often looked at myself with furious discontent.”
“A dream! What is a dream? And is not our life a dream?”
✅ “The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that’s the great thing, and that’s everything; nothing else is wanted.”
✅ “Oh, how hard it is to be the only one who knows the truth!”
✅ “I saw clearly that so long as I was still a human being and not nothingness, I was alive and so could suffer, be angry and feel shame at my actions.”
✅ “Is there suffering upon this new earth? On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering. We cannot love otherwise, and we know of no other sort of love.”
✅“I am told that I am vague and confused, and if I am vague and confused now, what shall I be later on?”
✅ “I lifted up my hands and called upon eternal truth, not with words but with tears.”
✅“And of course I shall make many blunders before I find out how to preach, that is, find out what words to say, what things to do, for it is a very difficult task. I see all that as clear as daylight, but, listen, who does not make mistakes?”
✅ “Dreams seem to be spurred on not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and yet what complicated tricks my reason has played sometimes in dreams, what utterly incomprehensible things happen to it!”
✅ “If at least I had solved my problems! Oh, I had not settled one of them, and how many they were! But I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.”
✅ “You see, though nothing mattered to me, I could feel pain, for instance. If any one had struck me it would have hurt me. It was the same morally: if anything very pathetic happened, I should have felt pity just as I used to do in old days when there were things in life that did matter to me.”
✅ “I love all those who laugh at me more than any of the rest.”
✅ “And yet, you know, all are making for the same goal, all are striving in the same direction anyway, from the sage to the lowest robber, only by different roads.”
✅ “I have always been ridiculous, and I have known it, perhaps, from the hour I was born.”
✅ “I am a sick man…. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. ”
✅ “Above all, don’t lie to yourself.”
✅ “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.”
✅ “Beauty will save the world.”
✅ “It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool’s paradise.”
✅ “The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
✅ “The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.”
✅ “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
✅ “But how could you live and have no story to tell?”
✅ “The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!”
Verdict:
Fyodor dostoyevsky quotes is that they are timeless, profound, and thought-provoking. They provide insight into the human condition and are a great source of inspiration and wisdom.