Top 500 Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 5 of 10

201. “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

202. “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

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

204. “Every one is really responsible to all men for all men and for everything.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

205. “A beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

208. “There are strange friendships: two friends almost want to devour each other, and they spend their entire lives living that way, but meanwhile they cannot part.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

209. “If not reason, then the devil.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

210. “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

211. “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

212. “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

213. “Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

214. “I have no self-respect. But can a man of acute sensibility respect himself at all?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

215. “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

216. “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.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

217. “Man is stupid, you know, phenomenally stupid; or rather he is not at all stupid, but he is so ungrateful that you could not find another like him in all creation.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

219. “Tyranny is a habit which may be developed until at last it becomes a disease. I declare that the noblest nature can become so hardened and bestial that nothing distinguishes it from that of a wild animal. Blood and power intoxicate; they help to develop callousness and debauchery.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

220. “Man is unhappy because he doesn’t know he’s happy. If anyone finds out he’ll become happy at once.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

221. “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

222. “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

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

224. “They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

225. “Nothing is more seductive for a man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

227. “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

228. “It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them – the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

229. “Believe to the end, even if all men went astray and you were left the only one faithful; bring your offering even then and praise God in your loneliness.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

230. “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

231. “Look how our young people commit suicide, without asking themselves Hamlet’s question what there is beyond, without a sign of such a question, as though all that relates to the soul and to what awaits us beyond the grave had long been erased in their minds and buried under the sands.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

232. “It was a marvelous night, the sort of night one only experiences when one is young. The sky was so bright, and there were so many stars that, gazing upward, one couldn’t help wondering how so many whimsical, wicked people could live under such a sky.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

233. “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

234. “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

235. “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.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

236. “It is man’s unique privilege, among all other organisms. By pursuing falsehood you will arrive at the truth!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

238. “Although your mind works, your heart is darkened with depravity; and without a pure heart there can be no complete and true consciousness.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

239. “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

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Featured in: Real Quotes

241. “For broad understanding and deep feeling, you need pain and suffering. I believe really great men must experience great sadness in the world.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

242. “My friends, God is necessary for me if only because he is the one being who can be loved eternally.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

243. “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.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

244. “Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more. Such grief does not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense of its hopelessness. Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to re-open the wound.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

245. “Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

246. “In short, one may say anything about the history of the world – anything that might enter the most disordered imagination. The only thing one can’t say is that it’s rational. The very word sticks in one’s throat.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

247. “Man is unhappy because he doesn’t know he’s happy. It’s only that.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

248. “Do you believe in a future everlasting life? No, not in a future everlasting but in an everlasting life here. There are moments, you reach moments, and time comes to a sudden stop, and it will become eternal.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

249. “We don’t understand that life is heaven, for we have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, we shall embrace each other and weep.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

250. “The meaning is, that you all bore me to tears and I’d like to be left alone,′ Raskolnikov answered calmly.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky