Top 500 Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea. And there is only one higher idea on earth, and it is the idea of the immortality of the human soul, for all other “higher” ideas of life by which humans might live derive from that idea alone.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

152. “One can’t understand everything at once, we can’t begin with perfection all at once! In order to reach perfection one must begin by being ignorant of a great deal. And if we understand things too quickly, perhaps we shan’t understand them thoroughly.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

153. “It’s the moon that makes it so still, weaving some mystery.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

154. “It’s difficult to judge beauty; I am not ready yet. Beauty is a riddle.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

155. “There is a crack in my soul, and I can hear it trembling, quivering, stirring deep inside me.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

156. “I want to suffer and be purified by suffering!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

157. “A dead man has no age.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

158. “Lying is a delightful thing for it leads to the truth.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

159. “Right attitudes produces right action.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

160. “I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared. And it was after that that I found out the truth. I learnt the truth last November on the third of November, to be precise and I remember every instant since.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

161. “It suddenly seemed to me that I was lonely, that everyone was forsaking me and going away from me.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

162. “Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it – that is what you must do.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

163. “And do you know, Sonia, that low ceilings and tiny rooms cramp the soul and the mind?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

164. “And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better – cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

165. “My life is ending, I know that well, but every day that is left me I feel how my earthly life is in touch with a new infinite, unknown, but approaching life, the nearness of which sets my soul quivering with rapture, my mind glowing and my heart weeping with joy.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

166. “Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing. Loving all, you will perceive the mystery of God in all.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

167. “Besides, nowadays, almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

168. “Pass us by, and forgive us our happiness.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

169. “Don’t be like everyone else, even if you are the only one.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

170. “For a woman, all resurrection, all salvation, from whatever perdition, lies in love; in fact, it is her only way to it.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

171. “If not reason, then the devil.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

172. “Russia was a slave in Europe but would be a master in Asia.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

173. “The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

174. “People talk sometimes of a bestial cruelty, but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that’s all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

175. “Beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

176. “With love one can live even without happiness.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

177. “Hell is the inability to love.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

178. “I swear to you, sirs, that excessive consciousness is a disease – a genuine, absolute disease.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

179. “Money is coined liberty, and so it is ten times dearer to a man who is deprived of freedom. If money is jingling in his pocket, he is half consoled, even though he cannot spend it.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

180. “The man who is happy is fulfilling the purpose of existence.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

181. “It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

182. “If I had had the power to prevent my own birth I should certainly never have consented to accept existence under such ridiculous conditions.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

183. “In every man’s memories there are such things as he will reveal not to everyone, but perhaps only to friends. There are also such as he will reveal not even to friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. Then, finally, there are such as a man is afraid to reveal even to himself, and every decent man will have accumulated quite a few things of this sort.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

184. “In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

185. “I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

186. “In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

187. “Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

188. “If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

189. “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.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

190. “There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

191. “Even as I approach the gambling hall, as soon as I hear, two rooms away, the jingle of money poured out on the table, I almost go into convulsions.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

192. “Since man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a rebel.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

193. “Talking nonsense is man’s only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

194. “There is nothing more alluring to man than freedom of conscience, but neither is there anything more agonizing.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

195. “Because I’m a Karamazov. Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I’m even pleased that I’m falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

196. “Realists do not fear the results of their study.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

197. “They were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

198. “If man has one good memory to go by, that may be enough to save him.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

199. “Whoever steps on the lowest step will surely step on the highest.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

200. “After all, bluff and real emotion exist so easily side by side.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky