Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes
On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering.
Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering...
Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.
Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.
Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it - that is what you must do.
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.
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.
I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.
Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
I swear to you gentlemen, that to be overly conscious is a sickness, a real, thorough sickness.
Variant: To be acutely conscious is a disease, a real, honest-to-goodness disease.
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.
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.
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.
Variant:
Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.
It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.
Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.
There is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever.
But you're a poet, and I'm a simple mortal, and therefore I will say one must look at things from the simplest, most practical point of view. I, for one, have long since freed myself from all shackles, and even obligations. I only recognize obligations when I see I have something to gain by them. You. of course, can't look at things like that, your legs are in fetters and your taste is morbid. You yearn for the ideal, for virtue. But, my dear friend, I am ready to recognize anything you tell me to, but what shall I do if I know for a fact that at the root of all human virtues lies the most intense egoism?
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...
The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness - that is what one must contend against. And I shall. If only everyone wants it, it can be arranged at once.
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.
For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else. And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in 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!