Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (born 11 November 1821, Moscow, Russia — died 9 February 1881, Saint Petersburg, Russia), sometimes transliterated as Dostoyevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, journalist, and essayist. His literary works explore human psychology in 19th-century Russia's troubled political, social, and spiritual turmoil. He wrote 4 novellas, 12 novels, 16 short stories, and numerous other works. Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880) are among Dostoevsky's best-known works.
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.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.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.The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.
A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And it all comes from lying – lying to others and to yourself.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
When I look back on my past and think how much time I wasted on nothing, how much time has been lost in futilities, errors, laziness, incapacity to live; how little I appreciated it, how many times I sinned against my heart and soul — then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness!
Fyodor Dostoevsky
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 soul is healed by being with children.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.I love mankind, he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human.Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.But how could you live and have no story to tell?
The world says: "You have needs — satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can't help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year. I feel I know you so well that I couldn't have known you better if we'd been friends for twenty years. You won't fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you've made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you've reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts.
When I woke up it seemed to me that some snatch of a tune I had known for a long time, I had heard somewhere before but had forgotten, a melody of great sweetness, was coming back to me now. It seemed to me that it had been trying to emerge from my soul all my life, and only now-
If and when you fall in love, may you be happy with her. I don't need to wish her anything, for she'll be happy with you. May your sky always be clear, may your dear smile always be bright and happy, and may you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of one's life?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
To love someone means to see them as God intended them.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.It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.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.If you want to overcome the whole world, overcome yourself.Right or wrong, it's very pleasant to break something from time to time.The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.Learning to love is hard and we pay dearly for it. It takes hard work and a long apprenticeship, for it is not just for a moment that we must learn to love, but forever.Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering...
If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
You can be sincere and still be stupid.Beauty will save the world.If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man… just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he’s a good man.It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them — the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.Humanity can live without science, it can live without bread, but it cannot live without beauty. Without beauty, there would be nothing left to do in this life. Here the secret lies. Here lies the entire story.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!Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.If there is no God, everything is permitted.I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.Yes, that’s right... love should come before logic... Only then will man come to understand the meaning of life.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.For broad understanding and deep feeling, you need pain and suffering.This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness.Suffering is part and parcel of extensive intelligence and a feeling heart.Besides, nowadays, almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.Wealth is the number of things one can do without.
I used to analyze myself down to the last thread, used to compare myself with others, recalled all the smallest glances, smiles and words of those to whom I’d tried to be frank, interpreted everything in a bad light, laughed viciously at my attempts ‘to be like the rest’ –and suddenly, in the midst of my laughing, I’d give way to sadness, fall into ludicrous despondency and once again start the whole process all over again – in short, I went round and round like a squirrel on a wheel.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The more stupid one is, the closer one is to reality. The more stupid one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence squirms and hides itself. Intelligence is unprincipled, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
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.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.If everything on earth were rational, nothing would happen.The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.A hundred suspicions don’t make a proof.When reason fails, the devil helps!People really do like seeing their best friends humiliated; a large part of the friendship is based on humiliation; and that is an old truth, well known to all intelligent people.The most offensive is not their lying – one can always forgive lying – lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth – what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying.
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!
Fyodor Dostoevsky
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; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps the most important of your ideas.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Only through suffering can we find ourselves.You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.Only the heart knows how to find what is precious.Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference.The more incompetent one feels, the more eager he is to fight.To think too much is a disease.There is immeasurably more left inside than what comes out in words.The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.He who masters the grey every day is a hero.Above all, don't lie to yourself.
