Top 500 Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

202. “Right attitudes produces right action.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

204. “It’s not miracles that generate faith, but faith that generates miracles.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

205. “If the person laughs well, they are a good person.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

206. “Words are not deeds.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

207. “If the people around you are spiteful and callous and will not hear you, fall down before them and beg their forgiveness; for in truth you are to blame for their not wanting to hear you.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

208. “I worship her, Alyosha, worship her. Only she doesn’t see it. No, she still thinks I don’t love her enough. And she tortures me, tortures me with her love. The past was nothing! In the past it was only that infernal body of hers that tortured me, but now I’ve taken all her soul into my soul and through her I’ve become a man. Will they marry us? If they don’t I will die of jealousy. I imagine something every day...”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

209. “Life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we refuse to see it.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

211. “He who desires to see the living God face-to-face should not seek him in the empty, firmament of his mind, but in human love.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

212. “Full freedom will come only when it makes no difference whether to live or not to live. That’s the goal for everyone.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

214. “He does not like showing his feelings and would rather do a cruel thing than open his heart freely.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

215. “Even if we are occupied with important things and even if we attain honour or fall into misfortune, still let us remember how good it once was here, when we were all together united by a good and kind feeling which made us perhaps better than we are.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

216. “He was crushed by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had of late ceased to weigh upon him. He had given up attending to matters of practical importance; he had lost all desire to do so.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

217. “To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

218. “But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

219. “Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

221. “Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

222. “It’s in despair that you find the sharpest pleasures, particularly when you are most acutely aware of the hopelessness of your position.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

223. “Suffering is part and parcel of extensive intelligence and a feeling heart.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

224. “There is no idea, no fact, which could not be vulgarized and presented in a ludicrous light.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

225. “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.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

226. “It is necessary that every man have at least somewhere to go. For there are times when one absolutely must go at least somewhere!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

227. “But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure? Answer: Of himself. Well, so I will talk about myself.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

229. “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

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

231. “There is immeasurably more left inside than what comes out in words.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

232. “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

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

234. “You can’t be angry with me, because I am a hundred times more severely punished than you, if only by the fact that I shall never see you again.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

235. “To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

236. “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

237. “Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those they have slain.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

238. “Love a man, even in his sin, for that love is a likeness of the divine love, and is the summit of love on earth.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

239. “Life is what matters, life alone – the continuous, eternal process of discovering life – and not the discovery itself.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

241. “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

242. “Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

243. “I am told that the proximity of punishment arouses real repentance in the criminal and sometimes awakens a feeling of genuine remorse in the most hardened heart; I am told this is due to fear.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

244. “Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

245. “Everything will come in due course, if you have the gumption to wait for it.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

246. “Latterly he tormented me, too: it was all quite natural, human beings are created in order to torment one another.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

248. “To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who does live beyond forty? Answer that, sincerely and honestly I will tell you who do: fools and worthless fellows. I.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

249. “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

250. “Was it all put into words, or did both understand that they had the same thing at heart and in their minds, so that there was no need to speak of it aloud, and better not to speak of it?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky