Top 500 Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “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

202. “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

203. “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

204. “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

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

208. “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

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

210. “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

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

213. “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

214. “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

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

216. “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

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

218. “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

219. “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

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

223. “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

224. “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

225. “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

226. “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

227. “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

228. “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

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

230. “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

231. “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

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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234. “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

235. “I’ve always wanted all or nothing!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

237. “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

238. “It’s not God that I do not accept, you understand, it is this world of God’s, created by God, that I do not accept and cannot agree to accept.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

239. “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

240. “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

241. “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

242. “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

243. “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

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

245. “Two times two will be four even without my will. Is that what you call man’s free will?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

246. “A just cause is not ruined by a few mistakes.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

247. “Woe to the man who offends a small child!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

249. “You are very beautiful, Aglaya Ivanovna, so beautiful that one is afraid to look at you.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

250. “Words are not deeds.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky